So we have an Albion Knight sword here. We're going to go ford a river,
we're going to leave it in the rain for a day and we are going to see
what happens. Oh and that is cold. That's properly wet now. Well let's find out.
Hi it's Tod from Tod's Workshop and Tod Cutler here and today I'm back with another film looking
at the quality of medieval goods, but actually from a slightly different perspective. This is
going to be fun, it's it's been filmed over two days or will be filmed over two days,
you'll understand why afterwards, but the thing is I've been looking at the quality of medieval goods
they made. Some fantastic stuff, amazing fantastic quality, they really did. You can go to museums,
you can see it, none of it's perfect, I use that word carefully, none of it is perfect,
but it is fantastically good. But they also made complete junk and you'll see that in
museums too. But what is intriguing actually is that even when the work is of a really good
quality often it just can't be durable. So many of the knife sheaths are of one millimeter leather,
that's really thin, really thin. Some of them are two, you know, I get it, better,
but one millimeter? It's not going to be durable. So it's one of the reasons that
I tend to do it with two layers of leather and that means that it is inherently fairly stiff.
You know it feels like a piece of quality and it feels like it's going to last and it will last,
but theirs weren't necessarily like that. A modern knife maker generally now will make the blade,
make the fittings, make the handle, usually will make the leather sheath
as well and any fittings that go on the sheath. In medieval times that was entirely different;
cutler was actually just an assembler. In the modern language now, cutlers make knives,
they didn't in medieval times they would buy a blade from a bladesmith, they would get handles
made from a woodworker, a bodger, whatever, they would have sheathes made by a cordwainer, they'd
have the fittings made by a jeweler. Right all of these things are different trades, if there's
any engraving, any gilding, different trades, so actually even just a simple dagger might go
through four or five people's hands. Now if you make a dagger and you're churning them out and
that's your job, you're just churning the daggers out, you're just doing it, you're just doing it,
can you get a leather sheath individually made for each dagger? And the answer is you probably can't,
not in an easy way. If it's a high status piece yes, if it's just a work a day working man's
knife, no. So the thing is it's just like the blades' fit in the guards I talked about in the
first of these films. Is you take a knife and you take a sheath and you go kind of fits, good enough
I'll have it". To modern eyes that is appalling right, absolutely awful; historically it's just
what happened. So if you take a piece like this rondel dagger here, this twisted one, typically
English style rondel dagger, 15th century, lovely piece, again a robust blade. Well you know what,
that's a bit loose. Now the first question is does it matter and it's rather obviously an important
question because you do not want your dagger to fall out. Well one of the medieval things
which often seems odd to us now is we like our knife to be really securely attached to the belt,
it really wasn't always like that sometimes it would go through the belt, sometimes it
go through the pouch, either through the loops or back down here, I've done videos about that,
I'll link those as well, but mostly they're hung on thongs. Okay, just like that,
now you would think awful way to wear a knife; actually when you move, the knife moves, it
doesn't tip upside down but you know what, maybe you don't like that and that's understandable,
but the thing is they knew too that if you danced you took your knife off, you took it out. You know
if you're running, you run, anybody who's run with a knife or a sword, you don't just run,
you run with your hand on it. Because otherwise it's just going to bounce around and it's annoying
because it's hanging on thongs and it will fall off. It's just what you do. So it's not a big deal
because actually you don't suddenly decide to do a handstand in a millisecond, that's not life right,
you put your hand on it. That's what they did. It's also completely solvable and it
was completely solvable for us and completely solvable for them so I'll just show you how
to deal with that if you don't like it. In this particular case the knife sheath
is just a little bit loose you see that there, so there's a bit of bag in there, a bit of a gap.
Now you can take that out by just taking a bit of stout leather or even a bit of wood and you
just push it into the back there and you work out what thickness you want and see how that feels;
well that feels pretty tight. So now you can just glue that in and trim it off afterwards.
What glue? Well you can use epoxy, epoxy is brilliant for leather, loves it. You can use
that sort of foaming wood glue that we got now, the polyurethane foaming wood glue,
probably be a bit messy, wouldn't advise it but it would work. You could use
PVA, you know just the regular white wood glue. Don't use it! Really don't use it because the
problem is it's acidic, you can smell it actually and if that touches the steel it
will rust it all right, so don't use that. So another one I'm just going to do for speed now
is just cyano-acrylate, so super glue basically, Crazy Glue, whatever you want to call it.
So I'm just putting a bit of this and it's the thick stuff right not the runny stuff,
it's the thick stuff you'll get it in hardware shops, so I've just got a bit on there and then
for the sake of speed I've got an activator as well so that's a catalyst, makes it go fast.
Just gonna slip that in there, I'm not going to touch it so it's not going to go off yet,
it will do when I touch it. pushing the knife back in and then just holding it down.
A few seconds have passed but if it's epoxy it might be five minutes,
might be a day whatever it is and now I'm just going to trim off this excess leather here.
and that's it. So now the knife is a beautiful fit so now everybody's completely happy.
Are they? Well the thing is you have to ask yourself a question now
because unusually for England it's not raining today, hurray! It's quite sunny,
but it does rain. Now if that is sitting there on your hip, what if it rains because the thing is
leather can be really quite sticky, quite binding when it gets wet and the more that leather,
the tighter that leather is in contact with your blade the more when it gets wet,
the more it's going to stick. The harder it is to draw, because these blades are hung on thongs, it
basically becomes a two-handed operation to remove the knife. You could do it you know, yank it off
in a hurry but then actually what happens if you break the thong and now suddenly you've got your
offensive weapon with your sheath on it. It's a two-handed draw. If you can be confident that your
knife will come out of its sheath as a one-handed draw, suddenly It's a one-handed draw again wet or
dry. So the thing is we make the assumption that they want the knife scabbard to be really tight,
they want it to be good, but actually that's not necessarily the case. Now don't get me wrong,
I don't like loose sheaths either, I like them to be tight, I like them to be well moulded to the
knife, I like them to look really considered, to look fabulous. But just because I like it,
doesn't mean that they liked it, just because I want it, doesn't mean that they wanted it,
just because I can have it, doesn't mean that they could have it. Don't make these assumptions,
you can't make the assumptions. What we can see is that a lot of stuff was you know questionably made
and questionably fitting, I think that is also true. And now we come to sword scabbards and this
is where it becomes a little bit interesting. So we have an Albion Knight sword here,
the reason actually is that this one is a little bit battered so I don't worry about it too much,
if it rusts it's not the end of the world, but we now have a Tod's Workshop scabbard made
for it in poplar, poplar wood core; so it was often poplar or birch. They were unlined right,
medieval sword scabbards were almost always unlined, sometimes wool, very rarely,
so that tended to be an earlier thing. So what you've got is wood in contact with the blade.
If you make this really tight to the blade, really nice to the blade and this one is right,
look at this it doesn't come out, move it, what's that? half inch 12 millimeters, it comes.
So actually that in modern sense is probably a really well fitted sword you know it's not coming
out right? I can run around with it even if I don't put my hand on it, it's not coming out.
Rain. What happens when it gets wet? Now I don't know the answer to what I'm just
about to do right, I've never done this but you know what? I'm doing it so you don't have to.
We're going to go ford the river, we're going to leave it in the rain for a day and we are going to
see what happens. So of course you know highborn nobles and so on, you know they're not going to
go fording rivers; Men at Arms on the other hand, absolutely required. So you know what?
for the sake of science, for the sake of you, to stop you having to do it,
I'm gonna do it for you. What happens when I ford a river with my sword, yeah sure I could hold it
over my head, but what about my shield, what about my other kit, what my bed roll? Right.
Who knows what's going to happen, I don't know what will happen, let's find out. Oh dear
Oh and that is cold. Right so we're going to assume that that doesn't stay dry.
That's properly wet now. Oh that's fast. So let's go to the deep bit.
and fast and I'm assuming that doesn't stay dry. Get out
But you know what, this is a fast-moving river
because it's been raining a lot, so that's why it's a two-parter, we're gonna leave it in the
rain overnight. And then in our fictitious Man at Arms world, it rained all night.
See you tomorrow. Our poor Man at Arms, horrible campaign this, he's been rained on all night,
so got dropped in a river, he's got rained on, what's happened? Well let's find out.
So you can still get the sword out which is good, but it really has
bound up, so now it is not the one-handed easy draw that I would like, it is in fact a.....
and that's actually.... sorry that's another interesting thing that hadn't
occurred to me. This is, that is one thing, but actually the biomechanics, the way it works,
that is not as easy a pull in fact, so although I can open it here, it's all right;
there actually quite an effort. And the thing is any any slow movement, half a second, quarter of
a second, suddenly you're handing an advantage to your opponent where there was no advantage before.
So do you want your scabbards super tight? I don't think you do. I think you just want a
little bit of freedom so if you get rained on in a campaign it's not the end of your life as well.
But it is the end of the film, so thank you very much, I hope you've enjoyed it but don't forget,
Todcutler.com fantastic site, Todsworkshop.com for scabbards like this, fantastic site. Come
visit, help support us, sign up for your bell notifications, sign up for the newsletters, sign
up for everything! Sign up for the channel. Anyway we'll see you again another time I hope. Thanks.
I'm back now because this is a couple of weeks later in fact and this is now thoroughly dried
out, sword's a bit rustier than it once was. Check this out; it doesn't fit beautifully anymore.
So its in, getting it out......
not so easy. See ya.