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Jeff Cierniak




Location: NE United States
Joined: 17 Sep 2020

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PostPosted: Wed 09 Feb, 2022 5:04 am    Post subject: Antenna Dagger vs. Mail!         Reply with quote

This was a not super scientific experiment of a Tod Cutler Antenna Dagger vs. 6mm ID half riveted half solid steel mail. It is sewn onto two layers of linen and two layers of sturdy canvas, the backing was fairly dense 3" furniture foam but then a cold steel buckler.

I tried three different attacks at 50% power and then close to 100%. I was wearing mail sleeves and steel hourglass gauntlets (pictured) to give a bit more weight and simulate an armored combat. I tried sottani (underhanded stab, forehand grip), roversi (downward blow from left, ice pick grip), and mandritti (downward blow from right, icepick grip). I am a relatively strong guy with I would say fair technique.

Sottani: 50% power did no visible damage. 100% partially cut into two rings a bit and did penetrate the garment beneath, but only just barely. Superficial wound at best.

Roversi: 50% power cut into rings a bit and resulted in some deformation. 100% cut deeply into rings and resulted in more deformation and close to breaking a ring on a couple of attempts, but fell short. Did penetrate garment, but would result in only superficial wounds again.

Mandritti: I managed to break a solid ring! And pop a rivet on one next to it. One of the pictures shows how much I was able to push the dagger through after the fact, as the cold steel buckler would not allow penetration. I think this could have been a "fight ender" potentially if the one stabbing was also grappling and in an advantageous position. Could result in some pretty good bleeding if in the right spot. Other hard attempts caused a good amount of ring deformation and cutting deeply into rings, but I only managed to break through the one.

The dagger is completely fine, perhaps slight blunting/very slight rolling on the tip, but I did several very hard strikes. If you look closely, the leathers on the thumb of my gauntlet did not fare as well Wink This wasn't super scientific, but showed me that it is no easy task getting through mail with a dagger. Certainly possible, and two combatants colliding in armor could probably generate more force, but not easy. I feel like it would still take a certain amount of luck with a dagger, i.e. hitting a spot that perhaps the rivet or ring just wasn't done as well or a spot that has been previously compromised. No hard conclusions, but it was enlightening for me! I do have video if anyone wants to see but it was super windy and cold so I was having a tough time recording properly.

Thanks to Tod for the great and affordable dagger. Just might have to get myself a rondel as well to compare!



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Dan Howard




Location: Maitland, NSW, Australia
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PostPosted: Wed 09 Feb, 2022 11:11 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

http://myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=19189
Author: Bronze Age Military Equipment, Pen and Sword Books
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Jeff Cierniak




Location: NE United States
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PostPosted: Wed 09 Feb, 2022 12:15 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

I'm well aware that my mail isn't perfectly historical, but thank you for the input!
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Bartek Strojek




Location: Poland
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PostPosted: Wed 09 Feb, 2022 12:37 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Seeing that blade's pretty broad, it doesn't look like a bad penetration at all!

What's the thickness of the wire, approximately?
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Jeff Cierniak




Location: NE United States
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PostPosted: Wed 09 Feb, 2022 4:43 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

I don't have calipers so approximate, as you asked for, is the best I can do. Just under 1mm it looks like. The weave is pretty dense, though.
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Chad Arnow
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PostPosted: Sun 13 Feb, 2022 12:37 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Jeff,
Cool test. Thanks for posting it. Happy I had that dagger for a while. They’re really good for the price.

Happy

ChadA

http://chadarnow.com/
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Dan Howard




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

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PostPosted: Sun 13 Feb, 2022 2:48 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Jeff Cierniak wrote:
I don't have calipers so approximate, as you asked for, is the best I can do. Just under 1mm it looks like. The weave is pretty dense, though.

That's the main problem with Indian mail. The links are hammered way too thin. Mail made from some of their links can be torn apart in your hands. The smaller links like the ones you have form a denser weave so they provide better resistance. I posted the above link to remind people that Indian-made mail isn't really suitable for weapons testing. I love the dagger, though. Tod always does quality work.

Author: Bronze Age Military Equipment, Pen and Sword Books
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Jeff Cierniak




Location: NE United States
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PostPosted: Mon 14 Feb, 2022 2:37 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

All good, gents, and yes I love the dagger! It was never meant to be particularly scientific, just give myself as a harnischfechten practitioner -some- idea of what it might take to actually get through since we talk about targeting he gaps so much. Not that I'm ever going to hit my training partners that hard.
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Jeremy V. Krause




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PostPosted: Tue 15 Feb, 2022 6:53 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Really, most of these types of tests are just for fun anyway.

Tod, who does some more rigorous testing will be the first to state that the results really aren't especially applicable in drawing concusions about the effectiveness of different types of armor and weaponry.

We need more historically made steels and irons to even approach making statements on the properties of armor and weapons.

This dagger, for instance, is likely harder and more resilient than nearly %100 of what would have been seen in period. And Dan has already mentioned the myriad of issues around using modern made mail.

We simply don't make stuff like they used to.

It's still fun though.
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Leo Todeschini
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PostPosted: Tue 15 Feb, 2022 8:35 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Thanks Jeff,

That was really interesting and in fact I am looking to do a very similar test with a rondel I made using hand made materials for the knife, though the mail will likely be Indian.

As Jeremy says this kind of thing is mostly fun as is my testing in honesty, but what I do believe is that it gives you an indication of what is going on rather than leaving you not knowing anything.

Yes my blade steel is likely harder and tougher. The maille is an interesting point and has of course been 'done' in that thread however my opinion is that maille could be iron, steel, burnished iron, work hardened steel or possibly even case hardened, riveted, riveted and solid, pin riveted, wedge riveted, thicker or thinner, flat or round, or again I understand, even welded. Lets not even get into the fabric defences under....

What this leads me to think is that any statement along the lines of "that is not representative maille" is essentially meaningless, because by all the odds it will be representative of some maille, somewhere and if you made the maille in 0.2% wedge riveted, 7mm diameter, 1.2 thickness round, 4 in 1 or whatever is the most common combo, any test would be defunct against the other infinite combinations. QED what can we learn form this?

If we assume that the maille is sub-standard to period (though not to all I suspect), I think there is a take away here. Maille is tough and the point energy humans can generate in this stabbing configuration is not enough to seriously compromise the maille and lastly the work here is valid and helps add just a little more understanding to the protection offered by maille.

Thanks Jeff.

My thoiughts....

Tod

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Graham Shearlaw





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PostPosted: Wed 16 Feb, 2022 10:22 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Leo Todeschini wrote:

What this leads me to think is that any statement along the lines of "that is not representative maille" is essentially meaningless, because by all the odds it will be representative of some maille, somewhere..

I think what matters more is that the mail is being used in the same role defensively.
While its tempting to think of mail as a one type fits all, there are clear changes in the desired properties based on the area of the body.

Some mail was built to be the main line of defence and others where secondary or partial defences, with there own requirements and limitations.

Take modern body armour it's graded in to ratings for classes of threat and its intended use.

And it was the same back then, if you make a mail gusset or collar then it has to have fabric like properties, it must flex and fold but it's the secondary defence of small area with a limited threat profile, it has just to stop fine points and glanced blows.

So its no good takeing a shirt and then then saying that all mail was that same size and patten because it wasn't.
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Dan Howard




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PostPosted: Wed 16 Feb, 2022 2:15 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

There is another problem: the mail links we have today rarely have much in common with those links when they were first made.

1. Iron increases in volume as it oxidises.
2. Mail has a lot of material removed when being cleaned after excavation.
3. Mail abrades when it is being used so the links at the end of its life are significantly thinner than when they were first made.

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Graham Shearlaw





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PostPosted: Wed 16 Feb, 2022 3:58 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Dan Howard wrote:
There is another problem: the mail links we have today rarely have much in common with those links when they were first made.

1. Iron increases in volume as it oxidises.
2. Mail has a lot of material removed when being cleaned after excavation.
3. Mail abrades when it is being used so the links at the end of its life are significantly thinner than when they were first made.


While non ferrous rings don't oxidise like iron rings, there questionable as to how representative they are of the whole garment.
They might of been a collar edging an much smaller then the rest of the garment or decorative trim an enlarged for economic or style reasons.
As there usealy attached to a lump of rust you cant tell much other then its likey a mail thing and of around so big.
(see the attached pic)

The working life of mail is most cases long and hard but the wear is not be equal on the entire garment, the areas of lower strain and less movement should be much less worn.

There's no pristine examples from mails golden age, we have battered old scraps and later mail some of which is in a good state.
Look at the Vimose mail coat, its got multiple holes, a large gash and tears up the sides.
[/img]https://i.pinimg.com/564x/02/e7/f7/02e7f73621934b2e16f0e0b5a15f3cd3.jpg[img]
While some of that might be ritual destruction, it clearly was far from new when chosen for depositing.
The Gjermundbu shirt is torn and partly corroded scraps.

Even later mail suffers from many garments being reused in different forms over time and there own long working life.



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Jeff Cierniak




Location: NE United States
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PostPosted: Thu 17 Feb, 2022 5:15 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Leo Todeschini wrote:


As Jeremy says this kind of thing is mostly fun as is my testing in honesty, but what I do believe is that it gives you an indication of what is going on rather than leaving you not knowing anything.

Yes my blade steel is likely harder and tougher. The maille is an interesting point and has of course been 'done' in that thread however my opinion is that maille could be iron, steel, burnished iron, work hardened steel or possibly even case hardened, riveted, riveted and solid, pin riveted, wedge riveted, thicker or thinner, flat or round, or again I understand, even welded. Lets not even get into the fabric defences under....

What this leads me to think is that any statement along the lines of "that is not representative maille" is essentially meaningless, because by all the odds it will be representative of some maille, somewhere and if you made the maille in 0.2% wedge riveted, 7mm diameter, 1.2 thickness round, 4 in 1 or whatever is the most common combo, any test would be defunct against the other infinite combinations. QED what can we learn form this?

If we assume that the maille is sub-standard to period (though not to all I suspect), I think there is a take away here. Maille is tough and the point energy humans can generate in this stabbing configuration is not enough to seriously compromise the maille and lastly the work here is valid and helps add just a little more understanding to the protection offered by maille.


Tod


Thanks for giving your thoughts, Tod! It is completely for fun, but I agree that it is very possible that the mail is close to something, somewhere. There seems to be record of "munitions grade" armor in Italy and England, though I am far from a scholar on the subject. Thom Richardson's Tower Armory book is fantastic imo, though, and stocks of mail were kept for quite some time. Yes, there were folks hired for maintenance at times, but certainly not all times of storage.

Were you fighting someone with a shirt, sleeves, or ventail that had been a bit abused? A section where the person setting rivets got a touch lazy? Maybe that's the luck you needed to get through. This is all completely speculative, of course, but it's fun to imagine. Mostly it was just to get the sensation of what it would take to -try- to get through it and injure someone beneath as I said. And that was certainly telling. My hand was sore the day after even though I was wearing a gauntlet. As was my shoulder a bit.

I did re-film some mandritto strikes because my initial footage was garbage and I managed to break two more rings out of 5 or 6 full force attempts, but still not deep penetration. All 3 times I actually broke a ring it was a solid one, interestingly...It is not a great representative test, but it was valuable physical feedback and info for my own purposes.
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William P




Location: Sydney, Australia
Joined: 11 Jul 2010

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PostPosted: Sat 19 Feb, 2022 1:04 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Dan Howard wrote:
Jeff Cierniak wrote:
I don't have calipers so approximate, as you asked for, is the best I can do. Just under 1mm it looks like. The weave is pretty dense, though.

That's the main problem with Indian mail. The links are hammered way too thin. Mail made from some of their links can be torn apart in your hands. The smaller links like the ones you have form a denser weave so they provide better resistance. I posted the above link to remind people that Indian-made mail isn't really suitable for weapons testing. I love the dagger, though. Tod always does quality work.


im curious, have we tested, like with force needed graphs/ machines, the difference in historically accurate maile vs many exaples of indian maille?

to get a catagorical difference of how MUCH of a diffference, say, proper riveting makes
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Jeff Cierniak




Location: NE United States
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PostPosted: Sat 19 Feb, 2022 3:39 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Not that I'm aware of. I may test mail that I make myself at some point (rings from iron skin and I set the rivets myself) if I can bring myself to hack at my meticulous labor Big Grin But that will not be with scientific instruments etc. The rings are probably still flatter than most historical examples as well, and possibly thinner, so...yeah. It's a complicated subject!
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