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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV

    Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov

    His family left the USSR for the US when he was three.
    Well oops!

    Then I don't quite know who I am thinking of. One of those random things I remember seeing mentioned but can't exactly attribute anymore. I remember the analysis saying all future utopias were strongly socialist in nature and blaiming it on the author's conenctions. Maybe it was still Asimov but meant less literally. Or whoever wrote it had ODed on Macartyism.
    Sci-fi is not my thing, only run into it by accident here and there.

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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV

    Quote Originally Posted by Vinyadan View Post
    Zamyatin and Bulgakov, good times. Although they are more satirical than hard sci fi.
    Zamyatin's We should be required reading for all high school students at this point, with its prescient depiction of a all-controlling surveillance state.

    (Also on that reading list, Brave New World, 1984, and Anthem -- sadly most schools are terrified of the notion that their students might come to question authority, hierarchy, and obedience.)
    Last edited by Max_Killjoy; 2017-12-04 at 10:08 AM.
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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV

    Quote Originally Posted by Martin Greywolf View Post
    Most well known example of this is the Varangian Guard in Byzantium, the equipment they used was essentially the same as that of the "Russian" area, mostly because that is exactly where they came from. Lamellar armor itself is harder to trace to its origins, but I'd say it was ultimately either Parthia or China - the style was widely used on the steppes, often for leather armor.
    I keep reading about the laments (?) of Varangian reenactors that virtually nothing about their looks is known for certain. Most if not all of their kit (Byzantine/Russian-like lamellar over mail, splinted limbs etc) are either imagined, speculated or conjectured from their place of origin/from their Byzantine master.

    For lamellar armor, as far as I am aware, Byzantine lamellar (or at least the reconstruction of it) looks nothing like the Parthia and/or Chinese style lamellar, but Russian style is much be closer to the Mongol/Chinese style.

    Quote Originally Posted by Kiero View Post
    Lamellar is much, much older than 11th-13th century. There are examples of it in the same region in antiquity, over a millenia earlier.
    The dead giveaway is the hand protection, which really wasn't all that common until 11-13th century.
    Last edited by wolflance; 2017-12-04 at 10:12 AM.

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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV

    Quote Originally Posted by wolflance View Post
    I keep reading about the laments (?) of Varangian reenactors that virtually nothing about their looks is known for certain. Most if not all of their kit (Byzantine/Russian-like lamellar over mail, splinted limbs etc) are either imagined, speculated or conjectured from their place of origin/from their Byzantine master.

    For lamellar armor, as far as I am aware, Byzantine lamellar (or at least the reconstruction of it) looks nothing like the Parthia and/or Chinese style lamellar, but Russian style is much be closer to the Mongol/Chinese style.
    Just the other day I was trying to find information about medieval (or earlier) leather-armor, and most of the stuff I read seemed to say that scholars don't actually know much about it, because leather rots away much quicker than metal under most circumstances. They are certain it was used for things like straps or backing (lamellar) or as an under-layer, but the full-body leather suits as presented in a lot of fantasy works seems to be more of an open question.

    I found myself Googling leather motorcycle suits, and I was wondering if anyone has experience with historical reenactment or LARPing might offer some response on the viability of that type of gear.
    Last edited by Deepbluediver; 2017-12-04 at 10:22 AM.
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    It's not called common because the sense is common, it's called common because it's about common things.
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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV

    Mongol leather lamellar appears to be pretty well accepted. Everything else seems to be completely fumbling in the dark and make believe.

    Quote Originally Posted by Galloglaich View Post
    There was a specific type of armor panoply that the Byzantines used called "Klibanion" or "Klivanion" (κλιβάνιον), which consisted of lamellar over mail with some other plates or strips of iron (very loosely analogous to what Gary Gygax used to call 'split mail') on some of the limbs.
    That's a nice design. I think I am going to adapt that for the soldiers of the southern city states in my new setting.
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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV

    Quote Originally Posted by Vitruviansquid View Post
    I'm very certain crossbows have been around since Constantine, if not Alexander the Great. Maybe you could justify an upgrade to a particular part of the crossbow? As I understand, Romans have been using technologies like it since before Constantine, in the form of larger scale catapults and scorpions.

    I expect Genghis Khan knows about how non-Mongolians work succession, especially if we are talking about him after a few conquests, and he merely prefers traditional succession?

    I'm actually curious what kinds of pre-requisites rifled cannons have. Were they only made possible after certain advancements in metallurgy, or would they have been possible but not obvious to Oda Nobunaga? According to Wikipedia's entry on "Rifling," the technique was known since the 16th century, but not widely used until the 19th century because black powder would foul the barrels.


    I wonder how it plays out in your head to explain how to make TNT to Alexander the Great.
    Crossbow was around during the time of Constantine, and during Alexander's time, the oxybeles (and gastraphetes?). That being said, ancient crossbow was nowhere near as advance, sophisticated and powerful as medieval crossbow

    (and for some reason nobody thought of mounting a sight on the weapon until 16th century, I think)

    The Mongol did have some sort of hereditary bloodline succession (the "Golden family" or Borjigin), it is just that succession crisis will happen regardless.

    For Oda Nobunaga, the problem isn't just about the cannon, but transportation, ammunition, and gunpowder (very hard to move around heavy artillery in Japan, they had to import gunpowder material, and few iron resource)

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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV

    As far as I know, the only reliable representation of the Varangian Guard is in the Madrid Skylitzes codex. It's not much.
    About leather, there is boiled leather. The other thing is that the Latin word coriacea, from which comes cuirass, literally means "made of leather", so it is generally assumed that, at least at an early age, armour was made of leather.
    There remain of course some questions, like the fact that leather protection didn't have to be meant for the battlefield: I am quite certain that the Romans had leather forearm and shin protections, for hunting and forestry. So the word might have been carried over to metal protection meant for fighting.
    Leather was used a lot for shields and to make things fireproof, untreated leather in particular iirc. We have leather shield covers from the Roman legions in Germania.
    Quote Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1955
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    Quote Originally Posted by Deepbluediver View Post
    Just the other day I was trying to find information about medieval (or earlier) leather-armor, and most of the stuff I read seemed to say that scholars don't actually know much about it, because leather rots away much quicker than metal under most circumstances. They are certain it was used for things like straps or backing (lamellar) or as an under-layer, but the full-body leather suits as presented in a lot of fantasy works seems to be more of an open question.

    I found myself Googling leather motorcycle suits, and I was wondering if anyone has experience with historical reenactment or LARPing might offer some response on the viability of that type of gear.
    Unfortunately the lack of resource also cause many "experts" and YouTubers to dismiss the effectiveness of leather, even considering it to be worse than gambeson.

    At the moment only Skallagrim's piece of leather appears to do leather armor justice. There are also multiple ways to reinforce the leather (boiling, compressing, laminating, tung oil, lacquering, + wood to form composites etc), yet their effects remain unexplored.


    If you look outside of Europe you can still find plenty of examples of full body leather armor, although usually in the form of lamellar. Horse armor was more commonly made of leather as well.
    Last edited by wolflance; 2017-12-04 at 11:04 AM.

  9. - Top - End - #939
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    Quote Originally Posted by snowblizz View Post
    I think what G meant was that they could have been generally known and shared cultural aspects, the few who haven't read Tolkien in the west can sorta pin it down to elfs and halflings or some such, not necessarily Soviet-hobbits (though that would probably be it's own kind of awesome). I think you make a fair point about the system not being so fond of flights of fancy, fairytales, fantasy and such belonging to a "mysticism" box along with religion. At least that's the impression I get. It seems sci-fi was more a communist thing, especially the stuff showing the brave new world of technology and progress it was gonna lead to. Star Trek but waaay over the top sort of. Didn't Asimov write a lot of his stuff under the suffocating blanket of Soviet censors? IIRC some things he did was clearly painting socialism better to appease the world around him?
    You definitely do have strong Sci Fi from Slavic countries, including well before the wall came down - Stanislaw Lem is the giant there, internationally popular and one of his films was adapted by the great Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky (and then again many years later by Hollywood).





    Lem was wildly popular all over Europe, and not cautious, or in a way he was, but he walked a really fine line which matched the rising curve of his popularity and definitely pushed the limits. His work was sardonic and subversive, ranging from hilarious satirical fairy tales to much sharper, much harder Sci Fi like Solaris. His Futurological Congress was a Philip K. **** style absurd dystopia and sharp social criticism (like Philip K. ****, accurately predicting many of the grimmer aspects of modern life). His Memoires found in a bathtub, nominally a satire of the CIA, was a very effective Orwellian / absurdist send up of the Communist police state as well.

    You also have guys like the Czech author Karel Capek, inventor of the word Robot (in his famous novel RUR also has some Philip K. **** vibes) and his War with the Newts is a hilarious satirical Sci Fi gem which is hard to compare to anything else I know of.


    As for the East European fantasy authors, I get my sense of this from the HEMA scene, and that might be a little skewed. Every HEMA fighter I've met from Poland, Czech, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, or Sweden seems to know all about Seinkeweick and Sapovsky, and you see art from painters like Billibin and Vasnetsov showing up in art from over there routinely on their Facebook posts. It seems to be part of the whole re-enactor / pagan metal scene over there as well which a lot of them are linked to. I'm only just now starting to meet Russians, mostly from St. Petersburg in the HEMA world so I don't really know what their tastes are like. And admittedly I only know a handful of fencers from Slovakia (Anton Kuhotovic and his group) and one from Hungary and she's no longer doing HEMA.



    I think it may just be an outgrowth of the internet, if you google certain search terms, and words for things like 'sword', 'knight', 'armor' etc. by their Slavic or German names you'll often find this art. That's how I originally ran across it anyway.

    G

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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    Mongol leather lamellar appears to be pretty well accepted. Everything else seems to be completely fumbling in the dark and make believe.
    When you say "leather lamellar" do you mean something entirely made of leather, with pieces stitched together? Or do you mean a leather sheet with small pieces of something else attached to it? My understanding of lamellar was that it was one large piece of cloth or leather with small metal (or wood I guess) scales sewn on to it.


    Quote Originally Posted by Vinyadan View Post
    There remain of course some questions, like the fact that leather protection didn't have to be meant for the battlefield: I am quite certain that the Romans had leather forearm and shin protections, for hunting and forestry. So the word might have been carried over to metal protection meant for fighting.
    Leather was used a lot for shields and to make things fireproof, untreated leather in particular iirc. We have leather shield covers from the Roman legions in Germania.
    Yeah, it was definitely used as a component of armor, I was curious about it's use as the primary material to adsorb hits and such.


    Quote Originally Posted by wolflance View Post
    Unfortunately the lack of resource also cause many "experts" and YouTubers to dismiss the effectiveness of leather, even considering it to be worse than gambeson.
    That is one of the things I read, which surprised me because I remember how tough a baseball glove would feel.

    At the moment only Skallagrim's piece of leather appears to do leather armor justice. There are also multiple ways to reinforce the leather (boiling, compressing, laminating, tung oil, lacquering, + wood to form composites etc), yet their effects remain unexplored.
    That was a neat video, thank you. One thing that struck me was that he was using full two-handed swings on a stationary target; I'm thinking that most fighters wouldn't just stand there and let you wail on them, so that leather might be sufficiently effective to ward off glancing blows.
    Last edited by Deepbluediver; 2017-12-04 at 11:41 AM.
    Quote Originally Posted by Rater202 View Post
    It's not called common because the sense is common, it's called common because it's about common things.
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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV

    Speaking of Skall, here he is musing on the swords vs other weapons.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixyEjSXAJ5U
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    Quote Originally Posted by Deepbluediver View Post
    When you say "leather lamellar" do you mean something entirely made of leather, with pieces stitched together? Or do you mean a leather sheet with small pieces of something else attached to it? My understanding of lamellar was that it was one large piece of cloth or leather with small metal (or wood I guess) scales sewn on to it.
    "Leather lamellar" is entirely made of leather (small leather plates joined to each other by leather lacing or other cords). Lamellar armor does not need a backing (i.e. small plates and cords are all there is), although some still have it.


    (Inside of a metal lamellar armor)

    Quote Originally Posted by Deepbluediver View Post
    That was a neat video, thank you. One thing that struck me was that he was using full two-handed swings on a stationary target; I'm thinking that most fighters wouldn't just stand there and let you wail on them, so that leather might be sufficiently effective to ward off glancing blows.
    Which shows that how insanely tough leather armor actually is - that piece of leather actually resisted not just glancing blows, but quite a lot of directed powerful hits.

    Skall also does dane axe/wood axe and light crossbow test on the leather. It resisted all but the heaviest blows from the axes, and survived nearly all crossbow shots excepts the one with a wicked hunting broadhead tip.
    Last edited by wolflance; 2017-12-04 at 12:03 PM.

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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV

    I wonder how people smelled after wearing leather armour all day. It doesn't strike me as perspirating.
    Quote Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1955
    I thought Tom Bombadil dreadful — but worse still was the announcer's preliminary remarks that Goldberry was his daughter (!), and that Willowman was an ally of Mordor (!!).

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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV

    Quote Originally Posted by Vinyadan View Post
    I wonder how people smelled after wearing leather armour all day. It doesn't strike me as perspirating.
    It doesn't, and God does it get warm. I have a hardened leather vest for LARPing.

    As far as historical viability goes I never actually questioned it. The biggest issue I see of non lamellar leather armor is that you can repair it. Once a cut is in it, it's there forever, unlike a gambeson or lamellar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Deepbluediver View Post
    When you say "leather lamellar" do you mean something entirely made of leather, with pieces stitched together? Or do you mean a leather sheet with small pieces of something else attached to it? My understanding of lamellar was that it was one large piece of cloth or leather with small metal (or wood I guess) scales sewn on to it.
    I mean armor with lamellar construction with leather as the protective material.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Vinyadan View Post
    I wonder how people smelled after wearing leather armour all day. It doesn't strike me as perspirating.
    Aside from not being that good at stopping blades, the problem with leather in general, is that if you make it thick enough to be relatively effective armor, it's very thick, and therefore stiff, heavy and bulky. You end up with leather about 13-15 oz (5-6mm) compared to 1-3mm (3mm on the front of the helmet and breast plate, 1-2mm everywhere else typically) for most iron steel armor in the medieval period. Leather isn't light and leather that thick is heavy, bulky and very stiff.


    This isn't easy to move around or fight in even in a LARP or SCA fight

    You can have a mail shirt weighing as little as ~10 lbs which is flexible, breathes and doesn't get in your way, more effective protection than a 15-20 lbs leather torso armor which is much harder to move in.

    The persistent notion that leather armor is light, cheap and flexible is probably based on our experiences with things like leather motorcycle jackets, but those are only 2.5 oz leather, which is 1mm thick, and that definitely won't work for armor.



    Lamellar helps fix the flexibility problem of 'armor grade' leather due to how it's put together. You also get some overlapping so it's effectively stronger for less thickness of individual lames. I believe the Mongols (and others in Asia) also used some kind of buffalo hide which was stronger and more suitable for armor, and therefore could be lighter than ordinary cow leather.

    Leather was also cheaper for Mongols who were herding pastoral people, than for settled Latinized Europeans in the Middle Ages, for whom textiles and cloth was a big industry and therefore more economical for "poor mans" armor.



    However all that said, and as much as I hate the "glancing blow" Trope, any kind of clothing and especially something relatively tough like leather does offer some protection. A good, well-done cut with a sharp blade will go through it, but not everybody cuts so well especially in the middle of a fight. Also, I think the Mongols main concern (depending on where and when precisely) was arrows, and leather lamellar probably protects pretty well against arrows.

    G
    Last edited by Galloglaich; 2017-12-04 at 12:36 PM.

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    Last edited by Max_Killjoy; 2017-12-04 at 01:28 PM.
    It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.

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    The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.

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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV

    Quote Originally Posted by Galloglaich View Post
    Aside from not being that good at stopping blades, the problem with leather in general, is that if you make it thick enough to be relatively effective armor, [...]
    This all matches pretty much how far I got with my own research a year or two back.

    I did an image search for "leather armor", and there wasn't a single result that I would consider as "genuine". There were two images of what looked like actual functional armor, but I'm not sure that they were not simply metal originals replicated in leather.
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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV

    Quote Originally Posted by wolflance View Post
    "Leather lamellar" is entirely made of leather (small leather plates joined to each other by leather lacing or other cords). Lamellar armor does not need a backing (i.e. small plates and cords are all there is), although some still have it.
    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    I mean armor with lamellar construction with leather as the protective material.
    I thought the definition of lamellar armor what that it was plates attached to something else, and plates-woven-together was that they called scale-mail, but I know that the term "mail" (or "maille"?) is misused a lot. So apparently I was even more wrong than I thought.


    Quote Originally Posted by Galloglaich View Post
    Aside from not being that good at stopping blades, the problem with leather in general, is that if you make it thick enough to be relatively effective armor, it's very thick, and therefore stiff, heavy and bulky. You end up with leather about 13-15 oz (5-6mm) compared to 1-3mm (3mm on the front of the helmet and breast plate, 1-2mm everywhere else typically) for most iron steel armor in the medieval period. Leather isn't light and leather that thick is heavy, bulky and very stiff.

    You can have a mail shirt weighing as little as ~10 lbs which is flexible, breathes and doesn't get in your way, more effective protection than a 15-20 lbs leather torso armor which is much harder to move in.

    Leather was also cheaper for Mongols who were herding pastoral people, than for settled Latinized Europeans in the Middle Ages, for whom textiles and cloth was a big industry and therefore more economical for "poor mans" armor.
    The impression I'm getting is that leather armor isn't necessarily bad, but that if you have access to fabrics and/or metallurgy, there are better options. So like a lot of stuff, it's realistic to have it but not all at once in the sort of fantasy-kitchen-sink that most games and many books and movies seem to operate in.

    That is a really cool picture though.

    The persistent notion that leather armor is light, cheap and flexible is probably based on our experiences with things like leather motorcycle jackets, but those are only 2.5 oz leather, which is 1mm thick, and that definitely won't work for armor.
    I saw that notation- rating leather by weight, in a few other places as well, but what exactly does it refer to? Mostly stopping power boils down to thickness, right? How does 1mm=2.5 oz?


    Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
    Why I hate Hollywood combat...
    I've had this discussion before with other people (most recently in the "What Fantasy Tropes annoy you most" thread I think) but at some point you have to either stop watching shows for entertainment or accept that its easier to make things like cool than it is to make them realistic.

    Lots of people have different points at which their suspension of disbelief breaks (for me my two most common triggers are first-aid and fist-fights) and it's easier to cater towards most people's previously-held misconceptions. As they say, knowledge is power but ignorance is bliss.
    Last edited by Deepbluediver; 2017-12-04 at 02:54 PM.
    Quote Originally Posted by Rater202 View Post
    It's not called common because the sense is common, it's called common because it's about common things.
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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV

    Quote Originally Posted by Galloglaich View Post
    Aside from not being that good at stopping blades, the problem with leather in general, is that if you make it thick enough to be relatively effective armor, it's very thick, and therefore stiff, heavy and bulky. You end up with leather about 13-15 oz (5-6mm) compared to 1-3mm (3mm on the front of the helmet and breast plate, 1-2mm everywhere else typically) for most iron steel armor in the medieval period. Leather isn't light and leather that thick is heavy, bulky and very stiff.


    This isn't easy to move around or fight in even in a LARP or SCA fight

    You can have a mail shirt weighing as little as ~10 lbs which is flexible, breathes and doesn't get in your way, more effective protection than a 15-20 lbs leather torso armor which is much harder to move in.

    The persistent notion that leather armor is light, cheap and flexible is probably based on our experiences with things like leather motorcycle jackets, but those are only 2.5 oz leather, which is 1mm thick, and that definitely won't work for armor.



    Lamellar helps fix the flexibility problem of 'armor grade' leather due to how it's put together. You also get some overlapping so it's effectively stronger for less thickness of individual lames. I believe the Mongols (and others in Asia) also used some kind of buffalo hide which was stronger and more suitable for armor, and therefore could be lighter than ordinary cow leather.

    Leather was also cheaper for Mongols who were herding pastoral people, than for settled Latinized Europeans in the Middle Ages, for whom textiles and cloth was a big industry and therefore more economical for "poor mans" armor.



    However all that said, and as much as I hate the "glancing blow" Trope, any kind of clothing and especially something relatively tough like leather does offer some protection. A good, well-done cut with a sharp blade will go through it, but not everybody cuts so well especially in the middle of a fight. Also, I think the Mongols main concern (depending on where and when precisely) was arrows, and leather lamellar probably protects pretty well against arrows.

    G
    Leather is actually pretty resistant against cuts and pierce. Not as good as good quality metal armor, obviously, but better than the crappy ones.

    It should be noted that thickness alone provides additional protective benefit to the armor, so it makes sense to make the armor as thick as possible (especially for less dense material) so long as it remains practical to use. Koreans for example allegedly created super thick cotton armor that even resisted 19th century US Army rifle (somewhat) reliably, and the armor is still light enough to be practical battle armor. OTOH, making a chainmail to achieve similar protection will probably make it too heavy.
    Last edited by wolflance; 2017-12-04 at 02:05 PM.

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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV

    Quote Originally Posted by Deepbluediver View Post
    I thought the definition of lamellar armor what that it was plates attached to something else, and plates-woven-together was that they called scale-mail, but I know that the term "mail" (or "maille"?) is misused a lot. So apparently I was even more wrong than I thought.
    AFAIK, "scale" armor is little plates attached to a backing, lamellar armor is little plates laced together.
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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV

    Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
    AFAIK, "scale" armor is little plates attached to a backing, lamellar armor is little plates laced together.
    What he said.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamellar_armour



    So long as you have the pieces cut out and the holes punched, it's actually easy to 'make' (assemble) and kind of fun. I think it works well too. You can buy leather, plastic or steel lames online pretty cheap.

    I don't know what the leather thickness as measured by the ounce thing originates from, but if you google it there are charts which shows how to convert it to millimeters etc.


    As for the quality of leather as protection, all I can say is I seen people have trouble cutting it (and have trouble cutting plastic water bottles too) if they cut wrong or have a dull sword, have cut a bunch of quite thick leather with a sharp sword (mainly my Albion Constable). When it's sharp - which is an important caveat, I could cut through 6mm leather no problem. I have also noticed though, and it's been mentioned before, that different types of blades cut better against different types of medium. Blade that cuts very well against wooden shields or weapon hafts, may not cut well against textiles (and vice versa) or bones or flesh.

    We used to make fencing gloves for longsword fencing out of thick leather and it worked well. I think that is why SCA etc. likes it - it's good for impact absorption. But I wouldn't want to depend on it for protection from sharp blades - I'd rather textile or (especially) steel.

    G

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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    This all matches pretty much how far I got with my own research a year or two back.

    I did an image search for "leather armor", and there wasn't a single result that I would consider as "genuine". There were two images of what looked like actual functional armor, but I'm not sure that they were not simply metal originals replicated in leather.
    There is some parts of a panoply, quite famously from Italy from the 15th Century. I have seen photos of it. But it was apparently for tournament with 'whalebone' weapons. Kind of like the 15th Century equivalent of LARP ;)

    The only authentic purely leather armor I've seen so far is from Asia, mainly Central Asia but also Japan and Korea. They have armor made of out of Elephant, Rhino or Crocodile hide in South Asia, and in Europe there is a lot of armor made of combinations of leather with textile and / or iron.

    G

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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV

    i think part of the people is a classic case of "little bit of knowledge is more dangerous than no knowledge".

    in this case, "experts" have been explaining to people form RPG background that historically, leather armour wasn't worn, at least not in the style that DnD used it, during the medieval period, that its become received wisdom that Leather Armour Was Not A Thing, despite growing evidence to the contrary as the internet allowed non European sources greater audiences. Now, as these sources get more known, the answer changes again, this time to Leather Armour Was Sometimes A Thing.

    sort of like the samurai fanboy stage the web went though, when the pop-culture version of jap history was floating about and the European stuff hadn't made it online yet, so forums were full of posters who took the tall tales of Japanese stories and rehashed them uncritically as being accurate, and compared them to the European knights they though still had to be winched onto their horses and couldn't stand up again if they fell over. Then, better more accurate info on the real medieval Europe got shared about and the tall tales of Japanese super-samurai were picked apart and shown to be myths or exaggerations, so the pop culture consensus swung to a more neutral position.
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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV

    @Galloglaich

    What do you know about the role and effectiveness of handgunners in the Hungarian Black Army?

    It seems like most sources tend to focus on the Italian Wars as the turning point for small arms, glossing over eastern Europe, perhaps mentioning the hussites as a possible exception. Often the defeat of Charles the Bold gets used to suggest that technology and tactics hadn't quite caught up to where massed handgunners were a viable strategy yet.

    Also, what do you think of the statement that cannons and handguns were mostly just effective in sieges or from stationary defensive positions in the 15th century? I know you've pointed out before that war wagons could be used offensively as well as defensively, do you know any examples where handgunners were used effectively as light skirmishers or otherwise going on the offensive?

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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV

    Quote Originally Posted by Galloglaich View Post
    As for the quality of leather as protection, all I can say is I seen people have trouble cutting it (and have trouble cutting plastic water bottles too) if they cut wrong or have a dull sword, have cut a bunch of quite thick leather with a sharp sword (mainly my Albion Constable). When it's sharp - which is an important caveat, I could cut through 6mm leather no problem. I have also noticed though, and it's been mentioned before, that different types of blades cut better against different types of medium. Blade that cuts very well against wooden shields or weapon hafts, may not cut well against textiles (and vice versa) or bones or flesh.

    We used to make fencing gloves for longsword fencing out of thick leather and it worked well. I think that is why SCA etc. likes it - it's good for impact absorption. But I wouldn't want to depend on it for protection from sharp blades - I'd rather textile or (especially) steel.

    G
    A good rule of thumb about the protectiveness of leather armor is that, if it is less protective than a suit of thick gambeson (the standalone type) then there's probably something wrong with the leather processing procedure. There are many ways to cause a piece of leather to become less protective than it should be, wax-hardening for example makes the leather “brittle” and much easier to cut through.

    (EDIT: as well as modern chrome-tanning)

    Many historical "leather" armors also appear to be actually made of rawhide.
    Last edited by wolflance; 2017-12-04 at 10:48 PM.

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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV

    I wonder how different leather from different animals can be. If some animal's e.g. worked better against certain weapons.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Vinyadan View Post
    I wonder how different leather from different animals can be. If some animal's e.g. worked better against certain weapons.
    There are probably significant differences, but we can't exactly cut down rhino to test it out nowadays...

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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV

    Quote Originally Posted by wolflance View Post
    Crossbow was around during the time of Constantine, and during Alexander's time, the oxybeles (and gastraphetes?). That being said, ancient crossbow was nowhere near as advance, sophisticated and powerful as medieval crossbow

    (and for some reason nobody thought of mounting a sight on the weapon until 16th century, I think)

    The Mongol did have some sort of hereditary bloodline succession (the "Golden family" or Borjigin), it is just that succession crisis will happen regardless.

    For Oda Nobunaga, the problem isn't just about the cannon, but transportation, ammunition, and gunpowder (very hard to move around heavy artillery in Japan, they had to import gunpowder material, and few iron resource)
    I wonder if there is a consensus among historians for why the small crossbows were not being used by ancient Greek soldiers.

    And could the reason for the lack of a sight be because early crossbows shot with so little force that bolts tend not to land straight where the sight would indicate anyways? Or maybe because it would cause the crossbowman to have to put his eye way too close to a potentially dangerous string?
    It always amazes me how often people on forums would rather accuse you of misreading their posts with malice than re-explain their ideas with clarity.

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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV

    Quote Originally Posted by Vinyadan View Post
    I wonder how different leather from different animals can be. If some animal's e.g. worked better against certain weapons.
    Probably quite significantly. But when we're talking military equipment, we usually don't mean singular curiosities. For a technology to become common, you need to be able to equip armies. There might very well be much tougher leather than cattle, but I don't think any of those would be available in anywhere near the quantities of cattle leather.
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