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T. Arndt wrote:
William P wrote:

sorry if this seems a silly question but, all these thrust tests.. were you thrusting at only the spanish made rivited maile, or the indian maile as well as the spanish one?

and out of curiosity, did you cut the the indian maile with either the sword or the pollaxe out of curiosity?


Isn't your answer below the picture of the three rings that are broken at at rivet?

Michael Edelson wrote:
These results are far superior to the imported Indian 9.5mm riveted hauberk I tested earlier. That hauberk could not stop the bow at 50lbs and 20 feet, nor did it stop any of the arrows at 20 yards, though it did rob them of enough force that the gambeson was able to defeat half of them. I later tested that hauberk at 70lbs and each arrow at both ranges easily defeated it. This maille, much more historically correct and of stouter rings with better quality riveting defeated every arrow shot at 50lbs and all of the arrows shot at 70lbs from 20 yards. The difference between them is literally life and death.


ill take that as a yes its the spanish maile,
but no, sadly its NOT obvious to me.
Riveted Maille and Padded Jack Tests (very photo intensive)
If you'r looking for period arrows/heads and bows here you go[http://www.archery-centre.co.uk]. And there is a show wich although is not the best historically but occasionally they do some interesting tests[http://deadliestwarrior.wikia.com] :\ :)
Perhaps some one can enlighten me :
it appears after all my reading that mail & linen is more easily defeated by arrows than by sword trust with the roughly same kinetic energy even with acute sword points .
Did i miss something ?
I don't see anything to suggest that a one-handed sword thrust delivers the same amount of energy as a war bow.
Ok i miss that, energy from warbow are easy to find but one handed thrust there is big variations i read 120 for overhand thrust somewhere then 20-40 joules in another book. So i guess its more around 70 joules perhaps. I know its very dependent of techniques, skill and fitness of the striker but even trained modern fencer struggle to pierce good mail. So ok warbows deliver much more energy than one handed thrust (and perhaps two handed too, i see some halfswording-trust with acute swords fail to pierce mail too).
Thanks
We don't really have the data for such comparisons at the moment. The stab-test kinetic energy figures come from random people who tried a stab or three with a rather heavy instrumented knife with a handle similar to some swords. I have a feeling people who train to stab powerfully like people train to shoot warbows would do better. What percentage of random folks could effectively draw and shoot a 150lb bow?

I think it's probably correct that yew warbows hit harder than single-handed sword thrusts at the same level of strength and training, but I'd like tests that clearly show this. Some period sources equate arrows and swords for piercing armor, while others indicate greater penetrate potential for arrows. The couched lance and sometimes the crossbow get the highest regard in this respect. (Monte apparently considered the first pass of the lance and crossbows the most dangerous. Barwick gave that account of a lance impaling a man wearing a coat of plates, which he thought equivalent to brigandine. Etc.)
I agree about the lack of data , but it seems that untrained tester pierce chain mail with more ease with a bow than with a sword / spear trust. Probably bow is a better tool for a one shot thrust than a pointy stick, i can accept that.
Even with same energy, sword stab and arrow shot will be completely different impacts, so it's really hard to compare them 'theoretically'.

Vastly different masses, velocities, momentum, stiffness, presence, densities and so on.

And as far as linen goes, in this particular tests it falls to swords way, way more easily than to arrows, so not sure what you are referring to with arrows being 'better'.

Of course, those round, blunt arrowheads probably are pretty terrible as far cutting textiles.
The tests against linen aren't much use because the samples weren't quilted properly. This is covered in other recent threads. Proper linen armour starts off at anywhere from 1-4 fingers thick and is then compressed down with quilting so that it is half that thickness. The amount of quilting is substantial and very dense - it isn't just a few rows spaced a few inches apart.
Benjamin H. Abbott wrote:
The stab-test kinetic energy figures come from random people who tried a stab or three with a rather heavy instrumented knife with a handle similar to some swords.


These instrumented knives don't measure kinetic energy. They measure the work done during the stab. Depending on exactly where the force sensor is, it might or might not include the initial (rather low) kinetic energy of the knife before contact (usually, it would include part of it).

"Stab energy" is OK, but not easy to compare with arrow kinetic energies. Given the same point geometry and size, "equal penetration for equal energy" will only apply if the target doesn't move significantly during the strike/impact. For a fixed target, this will be true. For armour worn by a person, a relatively slow stab will allow the person/armour to move a lot more than a fast arrow. In this case, a lot of the energy goes into moving the target, not penetrating the target.

Some of the variation in stab energy values come from how much the target can move. Typically, the "knife" uses a force sensor, and work = force x distance is used to calculate the energy. If the target moves, that distance will be high, and the energy will be high. But that's the energy that moves the target, rather than damaging the target.

Human + sword is a much more complicated system than an arrow.
Yep, good point about energy. As far as both period texts and tests go, there's some other evidence that two-handed staff weapons could/can hit as hard as or harder than than arrows from at least self bows. A 17th-century English colonial text from the land now claimed as the U.S. Northeast noted a particular Amerindian arrow shot struck a breastplate as if it had been pushed by pike, thus implying that pikes typically hit harder than arrows or at least assuming an equivalence. Similarly, a test of a circa-1600 halberd against a 16th-century munitions-quality infantry harness managed penetration of breastplate with halberd's top spike. This test achieves penetration of 1.5mm (or 1.6mm) mild steel with various polearm top spikes. By Alan Williams's figures, piercing 1.5mm mild steel requires 105 J with a 18-degree point (simulated arrowhead). 105 J is respectable figure for a yew warbow.
At least 105 joules yes, with a 5-6 lb poleaxe plus steel gauntlets plus the "armour" weight.
Many of the photos found in this topic's original posts have been restored. There's still a couple missing. We'll be contacting the author to see if they can be found and uploaded.
Thank you both for your time and effort!
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