[Aaron Harris]

Has anyone else see this ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dv2ZngY3A90

[Bartek Strojek]

Very interesting, thanks for posting.

Would love to read some info about this:

- is this funky halberd/voulge thing based on any actual find. Looks very fun.

- Is this properly sharpened, or is this actual safe Battle of nations style stuff? Couldn't quite hear it being mentioned when they measured it.

- who made the helmet? And how 'kosher' it is. Taking into account that the guy was pretty much bashing away with all his might against stationary target, it stood up really formidably.


Cheers.

[Kel Rekuta]

Eric is all about the BoTN stuff so this must be to prove the caved in helmets people have experienced are due to poor craftsmanship. In the video they measure the edge (~2mm) and the back of the blade (~6mm) with a total weight of 2.4 kg. Nasty even as a blunt.

Any of those blows might have broken the neck of anyone unlucky enough to be struck. Its rather extreme and yet the helmet didn't fail. A useful data point: good job Eric!

[Tom King]

I think we'd find that an inch deep dent into a helmet would be rather... well you'd probably be dead if the helmet was remotely form fitting with a historical suspension liner. Makes me kinda glad i returned the GDFB barbute i had that was a smidge too small to pad (for live steel SCA style with camp mats and such), even though it was quite pretty and a helmet I'd actually like to fight in.

Personally i think this just shows the power of a poleaxe/polehammer/polearm with a force magnifying spike as a striking edge. Considering most period helmets would be around 16ga and probably at best case hardened iron for the average 15th century soldiery, I see why the poleaxe/polehammer was a such a deadly tool.

For "friendly" tourneys, I wouldn't want to wield or be fought against with a barchiche/lochaber axe such as that; seems unnecessarily dangerous when a standard form of edged pole weapon serves the same purpose of knocking someone down.

[Aaron Harris]

To me i am impressed a mild steel helm can put up with that sort of punishment.
I have heard a spring steel helm has around 7 times more tensile strength than mild.
It makes you wonder how much variation there would of been between helms/armours/steel back in the day

[Steven Janus]

Hm, I have a 14 gauge helm that is mild steel. Pole axes are allowed in my group but I am not sure of the size or weight restrictions on them. It is a sugar loaf type and there parts at the top where there are two layered plates of 16 gauge resting on top of one another. It can dent with a hard enough blow. Where in all the lands can you get a hardened helm? That has to be serious money and seriously life saving : My group does not require spring steel or hardened steel for helms. Just 14 gauge steel.

[Tom King]

Yep, 10 bucks of 14ga steel made into a bucket helmet. Good welds and a strong double thickness brim equals a long lasting helmet. Still wouldn't want to be hit by something like that though

[Boris Bedrosov]

Personally for me, I've always cnsidered such tests as wrong:
* no one will stand around still, waiting for someother to bash him with full strength
** such ticknesses are quite un-correct.
So, if this video is demonstration of the BoN rules - it's OK; if it's a "arm vs armour" test, for me it's quite bully and foolish.

But in anyway, at least looks pretty cool.

[Tom King]

[Ian S LaSpina]

The danger of tests like these and the growing popularity of these styles of armored sport combat is it's starting to blur the lines between what was historical and what is purely a function of a modern sport with a historical outward appearance.

All weapons in the BoTN / ACL etc... are blunt concussive weapons regardless of how they're shaped. So a sword, poleaxe, halberd, falchion, mace etc... everything's an impact weapon, even if in historical context it was a cutting or thrusting weapon. Since all you can face is an impact weapon, and the nature of the sport requires armor that can stand up to constant blunt force trauma and bludgeoning, the armor has morphed away from historical armor to suit the specific application, in this case being beaten repeatedly with a blunt weight on the end of a stick.

So helmets have to be made from impractically thick mild steel in order to have the mass and impact characteristics necessary to not result in immediate death or loss of consciousness for the person inside. While heat-treated spring steel has far superior deformation characteristics, it can't absorb force like a 15 lb lump of thick mild steel, so it's probably not as safe. As long as we're not looking at any of these tests as anything related to historical armor, we're fine. But people keep trying to draw parallels and that is dangerous. We risk perpetuating old myths and creating new myths about historical armor in the process. We need to be careful in the discussion that these two very different types of armor are kept separate and not combined in context.

[Benjamin H. Abbott]

From what I've seen, some historical helmets, especially from the sixteenth century but also earlier, were 3mm or thicker on the top. One c. 1575 infantry burgonet measured by Alan Williams, for example, is 2.3-3.8mm and pretty soft (142 VPH). Jousting helms were often 8-10mm in period when unhardened, which shows what they considered necessary for safety. Of course, that was against the couched lance rather than any infantry polearm.

I'm not surprised that the tested helm ended up deformed and dented rather than cloven. What evidence do we have that halberds and other such weapons cut through helms? I can think of a seventeenth-century source that indicates halberds clove lighter helms, but I doubt that includes 3+mm crests.

[Michael Wiethop]

If I recall, Richard III was killed by a halberd blow to the head that drove his helmet into his skull, but I don't think it cut through the helmet.

[Bennison N]

Well, my HMB practice helmet is 3mm mild. The faceplate (not historical, but Mamluks and Turks only wore bar nasals on Chichaks) is 2mm. I have a bar nasal for it as well.

It hasn't been hit yet (it's still being assembled), but my HMB club insists on testing helmets with a heavy axe before allowing them. They're all power-lifting martial arts guys, so there WILL be a dent, no matter how thick it is. I'll put up a pic when it gets tested.

The important thing to mention about it is that it weighs about 6kg, and close to 7kg... Quite a bit more than the 3-weapon masks and Kendo men I'm used to, and some of those historical ones must have weighed even more. That was my idea, to have a heavy practice armour ... my bazubands/mittens (inspired by the Stibbert Krug) are 2.5mm tempered spring and are 2.5+kg each as well..

To have weight like that in an actual fight would be some seriously hard-work though, and, on the head in particular, a bit of a hindrance to great balance without a lot of practice. So extra respect to those guys who wore these things into a pitched battle!

Here's photos. The screws are obviously to show how it'll look all assembled. It has been made by Edward Shaykhutdinov from Tatarstan. The guy's amazing, look him up on facebook.

[Dan Howard]

[Ian S LaSpina]

[Steven Janus]

[Benjamin H. Abbott]

[Ian S LaSpina]

[Benjamin H. Abbott]

The late sixteenth century and early seventeenth century are indeed the time you'll find some of the heaviest armors ever worn in combat. In the 1580s de la Noue considered the heavy cavalry armor of his day so burdensome as to make men-at-arms only able to fight for short periods of time. But see the fourteenth-century bascinet measurements by Robert Hardy I linked to above: 2.44-4.57mm on the top front. A uniform 16-18-guage helmet doesn't provide the same protection.

[Kel Rekuta]

Ian has a point about late Renn helmets but its hard to refute the example of the Churburg S14 bascinet. The bascinet shell and visor come just shy of 4kg and tip over 6kg with the associated aventail. It took a massive whack to the back point during its working life which cracked it open somewhat. Its pretty hard to claim its a tournament helmet.