that's ok :)
anytime
but apart from any misunderstood irony my point was that most of this many page thread is based around differing ideas about what is acceptable within reenactment
some people reenact what could have been possible
others reenact what has been found or depicted
who am i to say enchantments don't exist
i mean i don't think i've ever seen one, although funny things happen to my logic drives when i'm around my girlfriend and she's wearing a short skirt sometimes......
i am a little disappointed all you saw was that i had executed some scalpel sharp irony and mistook it for something inferior...........
what i will say about the sagas
is that although they lend us very little about the time they depict, particularly about what was used and how it was used
they do lend some idea as the the attitudes about certain things at the time they were written, and how they viewed the time they depicted.
i personally haven't seen or heard tell of a leather armour find that hasn't been made out of some form of hardened leather.
the problem is that a single layer of supple leather is unlikely to lend a greater defence, from either bludgeoning or sharp, than a gambeson made out of multiple layers of fabric or even just stuffed with straw due to the way the fibers will bind against the sharp and the way the padding distributes the impact.
because of the way fabric fibres bind and resist a piercing weapon even if stuffed with, for example, cross laminated straw (i have read that this was used in a primary source somewhere.....memory fails me as to where at this time) , the straw itself would resist the weapon in a similar manner. In order to counteract this the weapon would have to razor sharp. This is unlikely to be so after the first time the weapon is blocked. Any flaw in the sharpness will also mean the progress thru the fabric will cease.
now if someone was wearing even a quilted soft leather garment, it is likely the first layer of leather will split with the initial impact, and even if it is cut i think the leather because of the non-continuous make up of the flexible cell fibres would not resist the force as well. I honestly think it would keep tearing if my experience with thin soft leather is anything to go by.
especially if it is riddled with perforations from the stitching. That is, in essence why i think a soft leather garment would fail as armour. Any stitching would be a perforation, in a way that does not happen on fabric because the fabric is made with holes in it (albeit very tiny but far less harmful in this instance.). All you do by stitching single layer garment together as armour is say "please insert something sharp somewhere between my armpit and my waist along the line of this very conspicuous seem" which may i add was probably more obvious due to the fashion of using contrasting stitch colours on the outside of the garment as a fashion accessory. If we follow this line of thought to a quilted garment, all that happens is you magnify the target area to those diagonal lines all over your body.
Here is the crux of why i think the armour was enchanted.........i'd say it was added because it was unbelievable (even with willing suspension of disbelief needed for fiction to truly have a greater effect than a warm fuzzy glow till you get to sleep) that anyone would make armour out of soft leather and live long enough to be a significant protagonist or antagonist in any story likely to last out the millennium.
now before anyone gets trigger happy in the upper eschelons about sarcasm
what i've used is definitely irony....there is no bitterness and there never was. it was sharp and i understand there are varying views of sarcasm. The other point that i would like to make is that if it did seem to be sarcasm i may have been serious. Particularly about the vids.
and the guy down the road does exist, the council has been trying to get rid of him for years. he's a dead set trooper
anyway
point remains that unless the leather was hardened it would tear along any stitch lines with the first decent amount of force applied
and if it didn't it would be either kangaroo leather which pretty much doesn't tear....but with the disadvantage of not being historically accurate....and yes....sometimes kangaroos are killed on purpose....or it would be too think to allow movement in the garment once stitched together and you would need to build something like lamellar or hoop armour to make it useful. even in simulated combat if someone tripped mid strike or was knocked from behind, if they were attacking with a spear i reckon you'd near be looking at enough force to tear the leather and make all that work almost useless. And for the sheer love of it what about if you had padded it or lined it with fabric? well then you may have just made the leather a moot point. It could give you some added impact distribution and warmth if you lived somewhere where the temperature wasn't going to get about 15 deg C very often. But really you might as well just make it out of fabric because it probably doesn't need as much oil as your
maille (and your leather almost would to counteract the constant corrosive abilities of your sweat...it seems to be worse on leather) it will be lighter and more flexible, and will dry out quicker after you soak the inside of it your sweat.
but like i said if those reasons don't compel you to take the easier road for construction......go for it
i hope it works out well and serves you for many years good combat........
thanks
Z