Info Favorites Register Log in
myArmoury.com Discussion Forums

Forum index Memberlist Usergroups Spotlight Topics Search
Forum Index > Off-topic Talk > Fabric Armour in Pliny's History Reply to topic
This is a standard topic Go to page Previous  1, 2 
Author Message
Mart Shearer




Location: Jackson, MS, USA
Joined: 18 Aug 2012

Posts: 1,302

PostPosted: Wed 13 Apr, 2016 12:31 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

So a simple Google search for "brined fabric" shows a number of people doing this to soften fabric. Vinegar added to the wash also bleaches whites and softens. Are we mistakenly presuming the goal is to make the fabric stiffer? The Ordonnance of Louis XI concerning jacks of 25-30 layers and a deerskin cover specifically says, " Et premièrement leur faut desdit Jacques de 30 toilles où de 25 a ung cuir de cerf à tout le moins; et si sont de 31 cuir de serf ils sont des bons. Les toilles usées et déliées moyennement sont les meilleurs...." (And first there wants for those Jacks 30 or 25 cloths, and a buck-skin at least, and if they be of 30 and a buck skin they are best. Cloths, second hand, and undone, nevertheless are better...).
ferrum ferro acuitur et homo exacuit faciem amici sui
View user's profile Send private message
Timo Nieminen




Location: Brisbane, Australia
Joined: 08 May 2009
Likes: 1 page
Reading list: 1 book

Posts: 1,504

PostPosted: Wed 13 Apr, 2016 2:19 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Soft sounds good. Apart from comfort, the energy of an arrow needs to go into stretching the fibres. Soft will let that happen over a larger patch of the armour; stiff will tend to localise where that energy can be absorbed and the arrow will be more likely to cut through the armour before it slows down.

Compare with mail. Free-hanging mail is much more resistant to arrows than the same mail backed tightly by a board. In the free-hanging case, energy goes into moving the mail and only the leftover energy is available to actually pierce the mail.

For cuts, soft is probably good too. At least the fabric will deform and have a large part in contact with the cutting edge.

Stiff is good if
(a) it's stiff enough for a point/blade to have to expend significant energy against that stiffness to widen an initial cut (plate does this well), or
(b) you want to protect against blunt impact force (whether from blunt things or sharp things).

"In addition to being efficient, all pole arms were quite nice to look at." - Cherney Berg, A hideous history of weapons, Collier 1963.
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
Michael Curl




Location: Northern California, US
Joined: 06 Jan 2008

Posts: 487

PostPosted: Wed 13 Apr, 2016 8:22 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Brined fabric theory comes from the belief that aztecs soaked used brine on their armors. However according to Ross Hassig there is nothing to this. One Spainard wrote it, but the word for sew and brine in Nahuatl are like a letter off. So we have to decide which is more likely, that the native told him it was a sewed garment and he misheard it for the food word he was using all the time, or that it actually was a pair of pickled pants :P
E Pluribus Unum
View user's profile Send private message AIM Address
Sean Manning




Location: Austria
Joined: 23 Mar 2008

Posts: 853

PostPosted: Tue 09 Jan, 2018 8:54 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Michael Curl wrote:
Brined fabric theory comes from the belief that aztecs soaked used brine on their armors. However according to Ross Hassig there is nothing to this. One Spainard wrote it, but the word for sew and brine in Nahuatl are like a letter off. So we have to decide which is more likely, that the native told him it was a sewed garment and he misheard it for the food word he was using all the time, or that it actually was a pair of pickled pants :P

Hi MIchael,

thanks for that citation! I had been wondering which source mentioned that the ichcahuipilli was soaked in brine, and
page 88 of Aztec Warfare: Imperial Expansion and Political Control has a useful explanation with footnotes.

Some modern linen armours experiment with soaking the raw cotton before they stuff it into the armour. They find that this helps them reproduce the density of surviving armours from Europe. I don't know if anyone has examined and published surviving Mesoamerican quilted armour in detail.
View user's profile Send private message
Dan Howard




Location: Maitland, NSW, Australia
Joined: 08 Dec 2004

Spotlight topics: 2
Posts: 3,636

PostPosted: Tue 09 Jan, 2018 3:57 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Did the Aztecs have cotton? Apparently Columbus found cotton in the Bahamas but I didn't think it grew on the continent before European colonisation. If not then we need to identify the correct fibre before experimenting with treatment processes. Maguey is a likely contender.
Author: Bronze Age Military Equipment, Pen and Sword Books
View user's profile Send private message
Dan Howard




Location: Maitland, NSW, Australia
Joined: 08 Dec 2004

Spotlight topics: 2
Posts: 3,636

PostPosted: Tue 09 Jan, 2018 4:05 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Timo Nieminen wrote:
Soft sounds good. Apart from comfort, the energy of an arrow needs to go into stretching the fibres. Soft will let that happen over a larger patch of the armour; stiff will tend to localise where that energy can be absorbed and the arrow will be more likely to cut through the armour before it slows down.

Compare with mail. Free-hanging mail is much more resistant to arrows than the same mail backed tightly by a board. In the free-hanging case, energy goes into moving the mail and only the leftover energy is available to actually pierce the mail.

For cuts, soft is probably good too. At least the fabric will deform and have a large part in contact with the cutting edge.

Stiff is good if
(a) it's stiff enough for a point/blade to have to expend significant energy against that stiffness to widen an initial cut (plate does this well), or
(b) you want to protect against blunt impact force (whether from blunt things or sharp things).


Once you layer a fabric till it is two-three fingers thick and compress it with quilting, it is going to be rigid no matter how soft the original material was.

FWIW vinegar is a very good fabric softener. Try some white vinegar in your washing machine instead of the commercial fabric softeners. It will make your machine last longer because there will no longer be any gooey residue gumming up the works (no your clothes won't smell of vinegar). Vinegar also makes a good rinse aid in your dishwasher.

Author: Bronze Age Military Equipment, Pen and Sword Books
View user's profile Send private message
Sean Manning




Location: Austria
Joined: 23 Mar 2008

Posts: 853

PostPosted: Thu 11 Jan, 2018 2:03 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Dan Howard wrote:
Did the Aztecs have cotton? Apparently Columbus found cotton in the Bahamas but I didn't think it grew on the continent before European colonisation. If not then we need to identify the correct fibre before experimenting with treatment processes. Maguey is a likely contender.

Well, books by specialists in the Aztecs mention "cotton" again and again, so I am happy to believe that they had cotton until I read differently. But it is always a good idea to look up the differences between the fibres commercially available today, and the ones used before the 20th century.

But if I understand Hassig and the Internet Sacred Texts Archive edition of de Landa correctly, there is only one source which says that salt was used to make Mesoamerican cotton armour. This source does not mention quilting, and in Maya "salt" is /tab/ and "tied/quilted" is /taab/, so it is possible that he asked his parishioners how they make armour, was told "with quilting and cotton," and wrote down "with salt and cotton." But my paper copy of Hassig is still in the post!

So I definitely agree that people should check the sources before they try soaking cotton in salt and quilting it! But it seems like there are a few sources from different cultures which mention soaking materials for soft armour in salt or vinegar, and it might be fun to play around with their instructions.
View user's profile Send private message
Ron Reimer




Location: Australia
Joined: 16 Aug 2010

Posts: 56

PostPosted: Mon 15 Jan, 2018 5:58 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Hi, I'm just wondering if what is being ,in the case of the South American armour , called cotton, might actually be Kapok. It was used as stuffing in amongst other things life vests etc.
View user's profile Send private message
Leo Todeschini
Industry Professional



Location: Oxford, UK
Joined: 12 Nov 2006
Likes: 1 page

Spotlight topics: 1
Posts: 1,723

PostPosted: Tue 16 Jan, 2018 12:47 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Needle felting is a modern method.

Historically felt can be made in two ways, but both are similar.

1. weave your woollen cloth, add soap and water and rub lots and lots and the fibres simply interlace in what is basically just a massive sheet of hair knot. Takes a while, but because the cloth is woven it starts with an inherent structure.

2. comb your wool and lay it onto a mould or flat surface with all the fibres aligned. Lay another layer of wool fibres at 90 degrees to the first, then repeat these steps a couple of times to build up a thickness of alternating layers.

3. rub round and round to start and later back and forth and round and round with your hands and always keep it wet with a water and soap solution. After a few yours you will have a decent thick felt. Again a thick sheet of 'hair knot'.

A similar process I have not looked at is used to make the walls of yurts. Have a look on you tube for this process and there is also a Turkish application for thick felt I cannot remember, but do remember a TV doc where barrel chested guys were slamming around unreasonably heavy rolls of felt and basically battering it with their chests.

Tod

www.todsworkshop.com
www.todcutler.com
www.instagram.com/todsworkshop
https://www.facebook.com/TodsWorkshop
www.youtube.com/user/todsstuff1
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
Sean Manning




Location: Austria
Joined: 23 Mar 2008

Posts: 853

PostPosted: Tue 16 Jan, 2018 9:33 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Ron Reimer wrote:
Hi, I'm just wondering if what is being ,in the case of the South American armour , called cotton, might actually be Kapok. It was used as stuffing in amongst other things life vests etc.

Well, that would be a possibility to keep in mind as you research this armour! I think that cotton can describe any woolly fibre which comes from a plant, but the only armour stuffed with kapok which I know comes from 19th century Sudan.

But all I know about Aztec armour is how the Codex Mendoza paints it, and how conquistadors described it.

An article by Susan M. Strawn says that gossypium hirsutum (the kind of cotton which is most often grown today) has been cutivated in Mexico since at least 1700 BCE The conquistadors would have probably been familiar with one of the old world species which are not grown as often any more.
View user's profile Send private message
Timo Nieminen




Location: Brisbane, Australia
Joined: 08 May 2009
Likes: 1 page
Reading list: 1 book

Posts: 1,504

PostPosted: Tue 16 Jan, 2018 2:05 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Gordon R. Willey, "Handbook of Middle American Indians, Volumes 2 and 3: Archaeology of Southern Mesoamerica", University of Texas Press, 2014, very briefly notes the use of kapok for Mayan quilted armour.

It's possible that the Aztec armour was kapok. It's also possible that it was cotton. Kapok is a New World native (a sacred tree for the Maya), and there are both New World and Old World cottons (as noted above, New World cottons now dominate commercial production). Since the Spanish new cotton already, but not kapok, it would not be unsurprising if they mis-identified kapok as cotton.

"In addition to being efficient, all pole arms were quite nice to look at." - Cherney Berg, A hideous history of weapons, Collier 1963.
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
Len Parker





Joined: 15 Apr 2011

Posts: 484

PostPosted: Sun 07 Jul, 2019 7:31 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Bulletproof felt made out of flax on bottom page: https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/aa.1930.32.1.02a00020
View user's profile Send private message
Dan Howard




Location: Maitland, NSW, Australia
Joined: 08 Dec 2004

Spotlight topics: 2
Posts: 3,636

PostPosted: Sun 07 Jul, 2019 11:22 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Bulletproof armour can be made from anything. You just have to make it thick and heavy enough. Until the invention of aramid (kevlar), steel made the lightest and thinnest bulletproof armour.
Author: Bronze Age Military Equipment, Pen and Sword Books
View user's profile Send private message
Len Parker





Joined: 15 Apr 2011

Posts: 484

PostPosted: Mon 08 Jul, 2019 5:58 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Constantine Porphyrogenitus, in his Tactics writes "a stout military vest of felt, such as is worn by light troops." https://books.google.com/books?id=SzZFAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA210
View user's profile Send private message
Jonathan Dean




Location: Australia
Joined: 16 Feb 2019

Posts: 81

PostPosted: Sun 21 Jul, 2019 6:13 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Len Parker wrote:
Constantine Porphyrogenitus, in his Tactics writes "a stout military vest of felt, such as is worn by light troops." https://books.google.com/books?id=SzZFAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA210


I would be cautious of that translation. The author also quotes Niketas as describing felt armour made with vinegar, but modern translations give it as armour made from linen, so there's no telling whether Constantine was actually talking about felt, or if he actually meant cotton or waste silk as other works of similar date describe.
View user's profile Send private message
Len Parker





Joined: 15 Apr 2011

Posts: 484

PostPosted: Sat 07 Dec, 2019 6:57 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

This has neurikon being used for felt armour:

"In the Naumachica sailors who do not have a lorikon or klibanion are advised to wear a neurikon made from double-stitched felt...."

"Leo advises troops who do not have iron lorika to wear felt neurika...."

As always, I don't know if his translation is accurate. This is the first time I'm seeing the word neurikon. On p.151 he gives his words for felt.
View user's profile Send private message
Jean Henri Chandler




Location: New Orleans
Joined: 20 Nov 2006

Spotlight topics: 1
Posts: 1,420

PostPosted: Sat 07 Dec, 2019 7:50 am    Post subject: Re: Fabric Armour in Pliny's History         Reply with quote

Dan Howard wrote:
Shahril Dzulkifli wrote:
No one knew that a piece of fabric can be turned into armour as stated by Pliny himself.
Unfortunately there is no proof of fabric armour which survives until this day.

Fabric amour has been used all over the world for more than three thousand years. We have surviving examples dating right back to the Bronze Age. There are dozens of intact examples and hundreds of fragments. You could start with these.

Two of them are in the Holstentor Museum in Lübeck
A partial example is in a Stendal museum - the chest section is still intact.
One is in the Musée des beaux-arts in Chartres
One is in the parish church of Rothwell, near Leeds
The Victoria and Albert Museum has a layered cotton example from India (called a peti)
The Royal Armouries has another peti from the arsenal of Tipu Sultan.

There are also plenty of texts telling us how they were constructed. Here are a few:

Ordinances of Louis XI of France (15th C)
"And first they must have for the said Jacks, 30, or at least 25 folds of cloth and a stag's skin; those of 30, with the stag's skin, being the best cloth that has been worn and rendered flexible, is best for this purpose, and these Jacks should be made in four quarters. The sleeves should be as strong as the body, with the exception of the leather, and the arm-hole of the sleeve must be large, which arm-hole should be placed near the collar, not on the bone of the shoulder, that it may be broad under the armpit and full under the arm, sufficiently ample and large on the sides below. The collar should be like the rest of the Jack, but not too high behind, to allow room for the sallet. This Jack should be laced in front, and under the opening must be a hanging piece [porte piece] of the same strength as the Jack itself. Thus the Jack will be secure and easy, provided that there be a doublet [pourpoint] without sleeves or collar, of two folds of cloth, that shall be only four fingers broad on the shoulder; to which doublet shall be attached the chausess. Thus shall the wearer float, as it were, within his jack and be at his ease; for never have been seen half a dozen men killed by stabs or arrow wounds in such Jacks, particularly if they be troops accustomed to fighting."

Dominic Mancini (15th C): writing about the archers in Richard III's army
"They do not wear any metal armour on their breast nor any other part of their body, except for the better sort who have breastplates and suits of armour. Indeed, the common soldiery have more comfortable doublets that reach down below the loins and are stuffed with tow or some other material. They say that the softer the garment the better do they withstand the blows of arrows and swords, and besides that in summer they are lighter and in the winter they are more serviceable than iron."

Howard Household Accounts (15th C):
"I took to the doublet maker, to make me a doublet of fence; for every four quarters: 18 folds thick of white fustian, and 4 folds of linen cloth, and a fold of black fustian to put without."

Companion of Hernan Cortez (16th C)
"The armour which they use in war are certain loose garments like doublets made of quilted cotton, a finger and a half thick, and sometimes two fingers; they are very strong. Over them they wear a doublet and hose all one garment, which are corded behind. This garment is made of thick cloth and is covered with a layer of feathers of different colours, making a fine effect… for neither arrows nor darts pierce them, but are thrown back without making any wound, and even with swords it is difficult to penetrate through them."

Aguado, History of Venezuela (16th C)
"Out of sacking or light linen cloths they make a kind of surcoat that they call 'escaupil'. These fall below the knee, and sometimes to the calf. They are all stuffed with cotton, to the thickness of three fingers. The layers of cotton are quilted between folds of linen and sewed with rough thread…"

The Irish "Cattle Raid of Cooley" (7th C) says that Cúchulainn was wearing armour made of 27 layers of linen (liente) and an apron made from the hide of yearling oxen.


Usamah Ibn Munquidh mentions rabbit fur as a component of his armor in his memoirs (though it also had two mail shirts in it as well)

Books and games on Medieval Europe Codex Integrum

Codex Guide to the Medieval Baltic Now available in print
View user's profile Send private message
Dan Howard




Location: Maitland, NSW, Australia
Joined: 08 Dec 2004

Spotlight topics: 2
Posts: 3,636

PostPosted: Sat 02 Jan, 2021 6:45 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Len Parker wrote:
This has neurikon being used for felt armour:

"In the Naumachica sailors who do not have a lorikon or klibanion are advised to wear a neurikon made from double-stitched felt...."

"Leo advises troops who do not have iron lorika to wear felt neurika...."

As always, I don't know if his translation is accurate. This is the first time I'm seeing the word neurikon. On p.151 he gives his words for felt.

I recently had occasion to research the etymology of this term and it has nothing to do with wool or felt. The word is derived from neuron, which can refer to tendons, sinew, or plant fibre. It also refers to cords or string made from sinew or plant fibre (occasionally it was used to denote bowstrings). My best guess, based on the context, is that neurika is describing a garment made from hemp or linen. The suffix -ika/-ikon is a diminutive form so it is probably a vest rather than a coat. Because it is recommended as a replacement for an iron lorika, the implication is that it was thick enough (probably quilted just like all other textile armour) to provide protection from weapons.

Author: Bronze Age Military Equipment, Pen and Sword Books
View user's profile Send private message


Display posts from previous:   
Forum Index > Off-topic Talk > Fabric Armour in Pliny's History
Page 2 of 2 Reply to topic
Go to page Previous  1, 2 All times are GMT - 8 Hours

View previous topic :: View next topic
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You can download files in this forum






All contents © Copyright 2003-2024 myArmoury.com — All rights reserved
Discussion forums powered by phpBB © The phpBB Group
Switch to the Basic Low-bandwidth Version of the forum