Re: (TFT) Penetration of armor by Longbows --> Rick has a study! 3

[Rick Smith <rsmith@lightspeed.ca>]

On Mon, 2006-09-25 at 06:36, Neil Gilmore wrote:
> > ....  He took his best guess
> > and made armor out of various types of mild steel. ...
> 
> That would appear to be a hole in his reasoning. Mild steel as we know it
> wasn't really available for most of the period. Wroguth iron is hard to get
> hold of today (wrought iron, the material, is not used for wrought iron, the
> decorative technique). Later armours were heat treated, and there's been a
> lot of research in the last 10 years on not only the content of the metal,
> but specifically how it was worked.

On page 6 Matheus Bane writes about arrows:

"One of the 16 arrow heads in the London museum was
analyzed to determine the metallurgic makeup.  This 
arrow head was 0.35% Carbon Steel with a mild steel
shank."


and on page 13 on maille:

"... Dr Smith tested 16 rings from various maille
garments of known sources.  Of these, 3 of them
contained enough carbon to be considered steel 
(Smith)."

Perhaps he was using the best conceivable armor
so as to err on the side of the defense.  So when he
says, arrows could penetrate the conclusion will
brook no "ah, but what if the armor was _mild_ 
steel... you didn't test for that!", type of 
arguments.

In any case, the maille did abysmally.  What with
chain links being broken and driven into the body
some sources said seriously that you were better 
off with out armor than with chain vs. longbows.


It turns out he is friendly acquaintances with my
Wife.  We will be sending him an email tomorrow 
likely asking if he minds us publishing his work.

Warm regards, Rick.
=====
Post to the entire list by writing to tft@brainiac.com.
Unsubscribe by mailing to majordomo@brainiac.com with the message body
"unsubscribe tft"