Hi it's Tod at Tod's Workshop and Tod
Cutler here and today we're back for another quick look at shields and the
Lockdown Longbow. So I'm taking these warbow shafts,
shooting them from this crossbow here at the same speeds as a warbow.
As you can see, my testing shield is getting rather ventilated, full of holes.
Now what is notable from these tests is that if the arrow strikes the arm and
the arm armor it doesn't go through the shield that
deeply. Now this poplar binds the arrow really well and it makes the arrow
really hard to get out. But quite a few people have commented
and said if you grease the shaft of your arrows
will they go in deeper? So today this film is
very simply. "If you grease your shaft does it penetrate deeper?"
No jokes.
What I'm going to do is take these three shafts here which have got
depth markers on them now and we're going to completely clean back the oil
and the grease and the wax on them and we're going to shoot them and see
how deeply they go through the shield. And then I'm going to do exactly the
same test again, but I'll wax the heads down as I've been doing for all of them
and then use this which is just a a combination of... you can see it's sort
of soft greasy stuff; it's just lard fat and beeswax.
And so it's soft. I'll be able to grease that on the shaft and we'll see if that
lubricates them gets them to go in deeper.
So you know what? it's an adventure for all of us, I don't know what's going to
happen either, so let's go shoot some stuff and find
out! Back at the range, 25 meters, Lockdown
Longbow, three type seven needle bodkin shafts
can we see those they're all marked off there we go nice and clean, no oil, no wax,
no grease. So we're going to shoot those now at the shield.
25 meters, not far but remember this is just a comparative test,
one thing against another thing.
Nice
So it's holding up pretty well for a popular shield don't tell me they're
rubbish.
Right let's go see what we got.
It's a real privilege being able to do this kind of thing because
you know this is sort of work but it's sort of fun.
There we are. Nice. This first shaft here is in at 15cm so
that is about 12cm on this one and this one has come in at 17cm around
about 15 centimeters on average through the back of the shield. Now I've
got to get them out and it is not that straightforward I can tell you.
So you got to waggle the shaft first. The shaft is tapered, so they will come
out in the end but.... there we go, but it's not
easy. So as you can see, that really is quite an effort.
Doubt you can see really, but i've got wax on the heads of these just as in previous vids,
now I've got to wax up the shafts with this lump of
some beeswax and lard really which is mixed together.
Just a nice smearing. I've got the gloves on because I don't want to get the bow
greasy. Hopefully that whole grease treatment is
going to lubricate it up and they'll go sailing through but you know
we'll find out.
Well from here it looks much the same but you know the guy holding the shield
might feel differently.
Right let's see what we got. Thing is you need to remember as well,
this shield is really on quite bouncy bungees here, this is not like it would
be close to the body and knocked into the
body under a strike or the weight of the arm,
so penetration would actually be more if a man were holding this than we're
seeing now. Well look here, I can tell you right now,
this is better than it was before. So that
is really going to start going into your torso depends what you're wearing
obviously but it's going to be striking your armour.
So here we are at the front of the shield and I can tell you now this first
one 27 cm 25 because that's 30/35
mark, 25 27 and 30.
I mean that that is really... again it's just like....
it's just so interesting, because the bottom line is putting grease on your
shafts really helps it go deeper into the
shields and that is potentially now going to start
striking the knights behind and interfering with them, catching on their
armour because they're not going to have time
to pull these out they've got to live with what they got. And the more you can
annoy them the better it is for you. We're back to look at the shield and to
see what we've got. And that is the back, so look at that there's my
forearm so you can see these really have punched through.
So as I said up at the target there, we had an average distance of around 15
cm before and now this time we have got 27
25 and 30. so let's say about 27 so 15 cm, versus about 27 poking
out the back of the shield. But the other thing that it's done is
it's caused me a real nuisance. Now look at that. I'm holding my shield
there fine; but if it's here in front of me,
look what it's doing. I can't engage with these. Maybe I've got
time if I've got my sword here and I can try and do this, but this is ash, this is
actually pretty tough stuff you know and maybe you haven't got time
to do that. The bottom line is this is just going to be entangling you all the
time just chewing you up, getting annoying, and
there might be some more here as well. So the fact that these greased shafts go
through that much further, is really interesting to me because this
will hinder my fighting and the guys out there knew that putting
grease on these shafts would do that; I will put money on it.
So whoever you were who suggested in those comments, there's probably a few of
you, "why not grease up the shaft?" you were
really onto something actually, because this poplar wood binds around
the shaft. You grease it up it goes in further and like I said, these
people were really good at observing their environment and what happened
around them and what, did what, to what. Putting grease
on arrowshafts, makes them go through the shield further
and to an archer that is a good thing. Did they know it?
I am certain that they knew it. Did they do it? who knows?
Thanks for watching.