Crossbow vs. Chainmail - The International Chainmail Competition

foreign [Music] skin and we're here at Fest de Coburg near Nuremberg in Germany we are here with the 10 pieces that people have sent in and they are pieces of chain mail that they handcrafted themselves and we are going to put them to the test we will shoot at the pieces with crossbows of various strengths and see do the bolts go through do the Rings get deformed and how do they look like that's the first out of a couple tests in this competition we have 14 participants from nine different countries out of which 12 qualified to be tested the first piece to test was made by Matthias Zimmerman from Germany we embedded the test pieces into a larger male shirt to give it more rings to pull at and let it develop the full mesh behavior that male armor has what you see here is Andreas Bigler from the medieval crossbows Channel he is shooting at our test pieces with the late medieval crossbow of 220 kilogram respectively 485 pounds canopies of males stand against his bolts of 45 grams almost 2 ounces this bolt went into the surrounding ring mesh you see that it penetrated and then bounced off the dummy of cloth underneath we were using the silver budded rings to mount the test piece the shock of the bolt was so strong that it made this connection undone it's a good demonstration of how much the larger ring mesh is involved not just the rings that get hit directly but here's piece got three direct hits one was cutting through a solid ring one broke a solid and a riveted ring and one just damaged a riveted ring near the left Edge where it could Glide off into the gap between the shirt and the test piece next is yanitila from Sweden the bolts were hitting two times and cuts through two rings each at this point we realized that the buttered Rings were not enough to connect the test pieces to the mail shirt so we changed it for a connection with wire rods now you see the piece of Paul dolis from Germany pulse piece had this magic aura that just made the balls land slightly below yet finally we did manage to hit one direct shot the bolt broke one ring and left cut marks on two other rings this is Robert Johnson from USA one shot broke a ring and heavily damaged two neighbors the other shot went near the edge and broke off a ring next is ashutari from USA when the bolt hit his male it only bent the ring a little and left some cut marks yet it bounced off completely with the other hit it slightly opened one Ring's rivet connection and it bounced off too a third hit near the edge did break a single ring and distorted two Neighbors this is the piece of Marco Fatu from Italy he had one shot that took out two rings you can also see the cut on the neighboring ring another shot hit near the edge and it broke one ring then we have muraju Alexander mihai from Romania his shot caused the white hole with three rings broken at this point the day came to an end and we had to ration the shots that we had left before it turned to dark this is samchin from Australia only the core of riveted Rings is his creation Sam had difficulty with building and shipping his piece in time all the way from Australia to Germany I added a surrounding mesh of riveted and solid rings to make it larger with his creation being so small it was difficult to hit and we needed seven near misses one hit near the edge broke one ring out of Sam's mesh another hit in the center took out two of his rings [Music] then we got to shoot at the elaborate mesh of Maurice patlow from USA we are looking at rings with an inner diameter of 4.6 millimeters here that's smaller than the cross section of a pencil he directed removed two of his rings in contrast to that dense Christian huffner from Germany with his large and massive rings at first the bolt went through the sleeve of the male shirt and penetrated both layers with his Rings offer more resistance than the commercial rings around Christian got one hit that destroyed two rings in the ballistic test Asha Terry was the only one who had bolts bouncing off without them opening a ring two points for Escher zero points for everyone else the second part of this competition is to compare our creations with male armor from history most of the participants set out to build their own rings as a form of art they had their tools and workflow grooved in before the competition was even announced only then they started to look out for Museum pieces yet here I want to incentivize participants to follow the originals so as a collective we learn to understand them in this part you get points from 0 to a maximum of three those who have a specific historic Idol and followed it get more points those who sent me on a mission to look for comparable pieces get fewer points please keep in mind that this is all for the sake of having someone on YouTube commenting on these rings I'm not the master of the universe what I'm going to say is just a more or less educated opinion and it's going to be biased and not necessarily Fair please help me out in the comments and add your opinion Matthias Zimmerman from Germany wanted his mail to be compared with an original that He restored its age is ambiguous it was altered at different times in history yet we will look at these Rings now and attribute them to the 14th century or earlier they are riveted and solid the rivets look like wedges and so do matthias's rings that means false re points for his work Matthias kindly provided even more photos for us you can find them on the museum section on ironskin.com next is Christian huffner from Germany he was experimenting a lot with rings in the past out of his personal variety he handed in these junkie rings so we would have something extraordinary to test at a time when he was making them he had no specific museum piece to look at these rings from the Swedish Royal armories look somewhat comparable yet then there's always a lucky find if you look long enough zero point for Christian but a huge thank you to him and my dearest appreciation he could have just chosen a more accurate sheet Marco facio is from Italy and Italian pieces from the 16th century are what we are going to compare with I like how Marcus rivets are half domed on one side and flush on the other side much like the museum pieces from Florence the museum Rings show more of a rich line on the back and the rivets are rather wedges than his pins two points for Marco Maurice patlow from USA what can I say his mail just made me fall in love there are 2 200 rings in this piece when you touch it it feels liquid I know about Maurice that he sees his mail as a work of art his art not an imitation of History there are some rare examples of brass rivets so I found an example for you Maurice still this means zero point in this historical comparison it would be a hundred points if this was a beauty competition I'm deeply touched that you have sent me this masterpiece from Sweden we have yanitila his rings are flush on one side half domed on the other the rivets are a cylindrical piece of wire pressed together with a lot of force sometimes the rivets are bent a little to the side like lamps Yani and I didn't quite know what to compare with in the end I chose this photo from the Swedish Royal armories yet if at all it's a lucky shot so zero points here Romania is represented by murayo alexandru mihai he wants this male to be compared with late medieval rings he pointed me towards multiple Museum pieces that we both don't have close-up photos of so we are looking at these instead the original rings have smaller rivets and they are flush on one side most often they are flat he has bulky Dome rivets on both sides we'll give one point for trying to look at specific Originals next is Robert Johnson from USA his Rings shall be compared with examples in the Metropolitan Museum New York I like how he matches the general proportions the original rings are elevated like a ridge near the rivet and on the back side they are flush I would like to have seen wedge rivets here one point for Robert from Australia we have some chin participating he got weekly inspired by 16th century pieces again some pieces look somewhat like this wedge rivets would have been appropriate one point for Sam this is from ashutari from USA he wants to be compared with rings from the 15th century his wedge rivets are spot on Slim and firm three points for Asher Paul dolis from Germany made rings that aren't too different from ashers he was using slightly thinner wire flattened his ring a bit more and he made very small and precise overlaps he wants to be compared with rings in the 16th century male capes specifically this one and I call this a success three points for Paul and here comes Mike Cervantes from USA with his beautiful smooth rings with pin rivets there are historic examples that somewhat look like this if you look long enough yet Mike didn't build it to match one of them instead he built marvelous rings with their own Beauty still this means zero points in the historic comparison last but not least is innocentiordan with his Recreation of the male from germanbu yemenpu is a famous grave find from Viking age Norway here you see the original rings and the digital visualization there are riveted and solid rings with inner diameter of roughly seven millimeter I find inukenti's rings matching quite nicely let's honor this with three points stretch test [Music] we have measured the weight that was necessary to crack individual rings now obviously rings are stronger when you build them chunky from thick wire but that means additional weight that's not fair to compare with the lightweight meshes after all one could just use two layers of lightweight mail if it has the same weight as one layer of heavy mail so we will be looking at how well a piece of mail performs in relation to its weight per area first let's look at the Ring's Dimensions most participants build the rings with an inner diameter of seven or eight millimeter only Maurice patlow went to extremes with 4.6 millimeter inner diameter and participants chose the wire from 1.1 millimeter to 1.8 millimeter with Christian huffner selecting the strongest wire the test pieces typically have around 700 or 800 Rings each think about that each ring takes a minute or two to make on the extreme end there is Maurice pudlow with the insane amount of 2250 rings semchin only has 295 Rings because his sample was smaller we weighed and measured all pieces and we took great care to stretch the male evenly when I measured the area from that we can calculate the weight per area that gives us how heavy a piece feels let's multiply that by almost two and we get about the weight that a full shirt of male would weigh you find Maria Alexander romijai being the lightest his shirt would weigh 12 kilogram respectively 26 pounds Maurice pudlow with his tiny Rings would have a shirt weighing 21 kilograms slash 46 Pounds if he gets to finish it in the year 2099 I'm choking that's the same weight as Mike Cervantes male with two times larger rings the only male heavier than that is from ashutari with 28 kilograms 62 pounds for a shirt surprisingly the male of Christian huffner looks heavy but with 16 kilograms slash 35 pounds it's not far away from the lighter ones this overlaps are very short and his rivets are very small yet how well did the Rings perform in the stress test compared to their own weight for that I divided the endured weight by the weight per area as a result I got the strength Factor rounded to whole numbers the number here also means the points that you get from the stress test first are the rings of murayu alexandru mihai from Romania two rings broke with the rivet slipping out of the rivet hole matthiased Zimmerman from Germany has solid and wet riveted Rings the solid Rings stayed intact the riveted Rings deformed and pulled the rivet out of the rivet hole this is Mike Cervantes from USA with his pin riveted rings rivets could not get pulled out instead his Rings got torn at the overlap near the rivet hole these are the rings with wedge rivets made by Asher Terry from USA again the Rings got opened by the rivet getting pulled out [Music] this is the mail from innocente Orden with riveted and solid Rings the solid Rings stayed intact the riveted Rings got torn near the overlap let's look at samchin from Australia we have another case of tearing near the rivet hole how about yanitila from Sweden he's using pin rivets and they stand strong while the ring itself is tearing apart now to the bulky rings of Christian huffner from Germany they broke in an entirely different way the ring stayed intact the rivets stayed in place yet with a lot of force the rivets broke in half his rivets are from a significantly smaller wire than the Rings themselves Here Comes Robert Johnson from USA he had a mixture of twice a torn overlap and once a slipping rivet these are the pin riveted rings by Marco fatcio from Italy his Rings broke with a torn overlap similar to Mike's Cervantes rings Paul dolis from Germany has wedge riveted rings for one ring the overlap got torn apart twice the rivet slipped Maurice patlow from USA was going beyond our expectation in so many ways his Rings were too small for the hook so we had to tie them onto the Rings broke by tearing apart last but not least comes Dylan Wyatt from Canada he is not formally taking part in the competition but he wanted to make us happy by sending in this piece of mail made out of jump rings surprisingly it got pulled apart easily the force needed was comparable to the riveted rings we see the best performance by Christian huffner with his tiny Dome rivets closely followed by Paul dulis with his wedge rivets an honorable mention goes to Robert Johnson not too far off all three of them seem to have in common that their overlaps are short but precisely shaped and their rivets are comparably lightweight with a couple hundred Rings such weight savings add up let's sum up all the points of the competition and find a winner before that a quick word about our sponsor nah I'm kidding I just want to say thank you to participant Nicolas Mourinho velis from Chile whose package didn't arrive in time third price goes to Christian huffner from Germany he will get this t-shirt with riveted mail pattern known from the iron skin shop the second price the cute little Anvil goes to Asher Terry from USA and the first prize is the book European male armor it is with no exaggeration the Bible of chainmail the author Martin beindhoven has left you a personal note on the first page and the winner of this first and only International chainmail competition is Paul dulis from Germany congratulations thank you everyone for participating all of your mailers strong and beautiful you are special for the fact that you built this we pulled this off with your help have a look into the video description below to find a link to the people involved [Music]

Channel: Ironskin

Views: 7,290

Keywords: Chainmail, Crossbow, Arrow, Armor, Armour, Competition, Ironskin, Kettenhemd, Wettbewerb, Mittelalter, Test, Riveted, Sebastian Voelk, Veste Coburg, Zeitreise, Geschichtsfenster, hand-made, Isak Krogh, Ringpanzer, Arrow vs Armour, historical, medieval, Armbrust, Ritterrüstung, knight, sarwürker, maille, iron rings, Andreas Bichler

Id: KPQmXB6AmJQ

Length: 19min 14sec (1154 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 20 2022