Is medieval BLACK ARMOUR better?

what are the advantages and disadvantages of blackened armor hi folks Matt E here Skol Gladiator now the eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed that um I'm selling my blackened armor probably okay so I've put my armor up for sale no I hear some people cry because a lot of people out there really love my blackened armor but an opportunity to get a new armor has come up unexpectedly and so I had to move fast now for those of you who don't know um I am actually having another armor made which is a long-term project but getting armor made takes a long long time it's also quite expensive as well so unfortunately I can't keep all the armors so to fund the new armor which an opportuni come up to get that's available now I have to sell this armor but that was something that I was probably planning to do in the future anyway so it was a sort of easy decision for me because it was like well okay I'll sell this now instead of in a year time and that will enable to me to get this other armor and then I'll work out how to pay for the other armor as we go along uh but nevertheless let's talk about dark and Arma so it's been notable to me over the years and in fact people have actually specifically asked me this question about black and Arma first of all they've asked how it's blackened they've also asked me about different finishes on Armor we'll talk about that in a second Al I have done a video not long ago about that topic so I won't go deep into that um but what are the advantages and disadvantages now the first thing I want to say before I go into that um I'm trying to keep this fairly concise is that um it wasn't my choice to have black and armor okay this armor much like the one I'm looking at now became available and I jumped on it would I have chosen to have black and armor from the start if I had been having this made for me probably not um and that was because I'd heard about certain disadvantages of black and armor one of those being that if you wanted to change pieces uh so mix and match you wanted to let's say replace your pauldrons or uh you know put a different salad with with the um harness then it's very difficult to get the colors to match and that is absolutely true however it's not as difficult as I thought it might be um and that is because this is chemically blued so we answer another question there so this isn't heat blued now traditionally they did actually have ways of chemically bluing things I don't I honestly on heart I don't know whether they did but there are certain fairly widely available chemicals that you can mix together to make steel go different colors now for anyone who doesn't know when steel changes colors it is oxidization so you might think of oxidization as rust and that is one form of oxidization but if you clean the rust off you will notice that underneath you have what's called patina or patina which is where the steel underneath the rust goes a dark color and we often find that with uh an antique swords I mean if I just grab um an antique sword here here's a good example you'll notice when I show antiques on the channel they often look dark and the reason is it's a reaction between the steel and the the air and a bit of moisture in the air as well so fundamentally oxidization changes the color of the metal but it doesn't always change it the same color depending on the nature of the the uh the air the acidity of things like people touching it and things like this it can go different colors so without going deep into the science of it cuz I don't know all the science of it um the fact is that you can turn steel a number of different colors uh including Brown um black um blue um a Goldie color all sorts of different colors as a result of different things that happen to it or things that you do to it and another common way of doing that is with heat so most people if they want to make something blue steel blue they'll just use a blow torch me I've BL blued loads of things in my life I've blued cross guards and P and all sorts of things um and that is the color also I think it's about 400° Centigrade that approximately is tempering heat so when you've quenched something so something's glowing red at 8 900° and you quench it in oil for example it it comes out comes out black that's oxidization you clean that off it's now silver because you clean the oxide off the surface and then you temper it to a blue heat and you keep it at a blue heat for a long time and that tempers it and makes it springy for example if it's a spring steel and you'll end up with something that's blue but then that blue is normally polished off in the knife or sword making process or armor making process but you can leave it blue but as I say there's also chemical ways to achieve the same thing so by heating by acid and other chemical treatments um and just the air um and natural o oxidization steel can change color so to because a long story short armor can be made to be black straight from the forge it can be blued as a result of heating up up to Blue heat or as a result of hardening and then tempering or it could be left with a Goldie finish or even a purpley um purpley Finch purpley blue all of these kind of gradient of colors it's not quite a rainbow but the gradient of colors that steel goes through you can make steel that color so armor that color but in addition to that you can also paint it and salot particularly in Germany uh and I think probably in Switzerland as well were sometimes painted with either the colors and the the flag of the city or city state or the the particular local Lord or other heraldry painted onto them so and it can have a cloth cover as well that's another one actually so you can have uh you know something like velvet for example or sometimes even leather uh surface over riveted usually sometimes glued over the surface of armor as well so the steel can be changed lots of different colors it can be painted it can be um just blacked from the forge and just not not polished up not ground off or of course it can be highly polished now I did a review not that long ago about a recent book by Chris Dobson where he asserts that armor was usually a color other than brightly polished highly finished silver color that you're normally familiar with um steel armor I wouldn't necessarily agree with that I don't think the evidence really supports it but what I would say is there's a middle ground I don't think he's wrong I'm not saying that I think that probably the majority of armor certainly in the 14th Century late 14th century and into the 15th century was highly polished steel most of it we have it shown in up fairly convincingly and we also have it referred to in written references as well uh but as we go into the later 15th century we possibly maybe see an increase in the uh sort of things like this blackened and blued armors and in the 16th century we even have uh it used as a decorative effect where you have black next to Silver uh most famously in certain German armors maybe we'll do a dedicated video on in the future so there we go there's an overview of black and armor uh it wasn't uncommon in the 15th century certainly it was even more common in the 16th century um there was a fair amount of it about but don't think that all armor was colored don't think that all of it was blued or blacked or russeted or whatever or gilded in some cases it much of it was just highly polished silver so um Advantage so disadvantages yes it's hard to mix and match and another disadvantage that people have said about black and Arma is that when it gets scratched or damaged um it shows up more and it's harder to fix up I don't necessarily agree with that so my armor has actually been bashed around you know scratched and kind of um sort of used quite a bit and to be honest the scratches and scuffs don't really show up I mean this helmet has been hit by all sorts of things and look at it yeah okay it's got It's got little scratches and squiggles and stuff in it but by and large it is still a blackened or blued helmet it's um it's not you know it's not it doesn't look unsightly for having received wear and tear moreover it's not as difficult to fix that as you might think especially in the modern world because you can buy tubes of things like Perma blue for repairing guns for firearms so literally you combine a tube straight off the internet right now a tube of paste and you just if you've got a big old silver slash down your armor you can just rub this paste on for the practice on some steel first although it does vary on the different types of Steel mild steel carbon steel it oxidizes at different rates and slightly different colors in my experience but you rub a little bit on and when it looks about the right color quickly wipe it off and put some something like a window cleaner or something on there to to quickly neutralize it but fundamentally you can patch up those unsightly bits quite easily so uh disadvantages of blue armor another one that I've heard is it gets incredibly hot in the sun does it I honestly can't say that that's been my observation um now it's partly because the material so if you think about steel steel is a good conductor of heat and electricity as well so don't stick your fingers in any plug sockets um but because it's a good conductor of heat when you're in hot um environment with the sun beating down on you whether you're wearing shiny steel or whether you're wearing black and steel you're wearing steel and so the heat from your body uh will radiate out and the heat from outside will radiate in and it reaches a sort of balance point now is there a difference is there a genuine difference between highly polished steel plate and black and steel plate I honestly don't know cuz I can't say I've done the science but I have stood in the hottest summer that we've had for ages in this uh tuxbury battle with other people and a lot of other people keeled over from heat stroke and had to see the Medics and all this kind of stuff and I have to say the people who I thought suffered the most were people in brigandines and people in gamerson and Jacks because they're essentially wearing duvet or multi multiple layers of insulation whereas me in a curas actually had a fairly two-way exchange of heat although you get a lot of very sweaty inside the heat is allowed to radiate in outwards um better than if you're wearing essentially a body duvet so um personally maybe black armor absorbs a bit more heat from the Sun than shiny silver armor does I haven't I can't really say for definite I think that it's probably not the case or rather that it you don't notice it it relatively speaking because it's made of steel and steel doesn't retain heat very well it it exudes it loses heat quite quickly whereas something like gamerson retains heat really well now are there any other disadvantages of black and armor that I can think of to be honest not really um one of the only things I could say potentially is it makes you more conspicuous in an environment where most people have got shiny silver armor and maybe you don't want to be noticed on the battlefield depending you know if some people are out to to assassinate you or you know get a vendetta on you which in like the wars of the Roses was quite common uh but honestly most people particularly High nobility focused on making themselves as conspicuous as possible and showing off so I don't think that would be a thing um it could be that there is a reverse status thing there that actually in a medieval environment what showed your greatest wealth was actually having highly polished silvery shiny armor or gilded armor which was very very expensive and usually only for sort of very high nobility in Kings whereas blue armor made you look a bit maybe a bit middle class obviously you've got armor so you're not working class but may you maybe maybe I don't know maybe it didn't look the poshest that's the literally the only other thing I can think about as a disadvantage for dark and dhor but overall um I can't really think of any big disadvantages for it it's contrary to my fears of getting it it's been pretty good now let's look at some advantages so the major advantage of blacken armor and I cannot overstate this point is its rust retardant so this is really good um at not getting rusty now when you're sweating a lot in armor very hot sometimes poor people pour water over you obviously if you were actually on a military campaign you might be waiting through a river or riding through a river you'd have a sweaty horse if you're riding horse sweat not great on Armor most people with armor are biting rust the whole bloody time um and there's a lot of ballist oil and WD40 and mineral oil and Renaissance wax that gets used by people with armor to try and fight off um that rust and I have to say there's a lot of people these days with quite satin finish on their armors and unfortunately this is the most prone to rusting because it has the greatest surface area if you imagine a highly polished surface is very flat but a satin surface is like little serrations so actually you have an increased surface area and therefore places nooks and crannies where moisture is more likely to get trapped and not get oil um cleaning it out so satin armor and I have some satin gaunlets as you know is more prone to rusting so highly polished steel less prone to rusting but on the flip side between those two if you get rusted on your satin armor you clean the rust off you get some wire wool or some wet and dry sandpaper or one of those scrubby pads and you can make it good again really easily with highly polished armor if you get rust on it you clean the rust off and you've now got a big satin spot where you've clean the rust off and you have to get it on a buffing wheel and bring it all the way back to mirror polish again so overall again this shows status if you're rich enough to have high polish on your armor and also Rich enough to maintain it and fix it that means you've got servants you've got staff you've got attendance that shows your wealth if you got a satin finish armor it's obviously cheaper to do in the first place uh but it potentially although it's more like to get rusty it's easier to fix up so I would say generally speaking high polish shows higher status now how does this relate to blued and blacked armor well interestingly you will notice this is very shiny now this isn't boasting or anything but this has essentially been mirror polished before it was blued now a lot of blued and blacked armor out there isn't mirror polished before it's blued it's just satin polished and then blued or blacked now in that case although the bluing or blacking by itself because it's oxidized already and like with ships you rust a ships hole to prevent it from getting worse rust later on then you paint over the rust same thing here if you get a layer of oxidization it protects it from further oxidization that's why gun barrels and gun parts are blued incidentally if you've ever wondered why gun guns are normally black or blue that's to uh protect them from moisture and from rust um so in itself the bluing or blacking will Stave off some Rust but if your surface is Satin underneath that then you're still more likely to get rust than if it's mirror so the absolute without using modern stainless steel or without using gilding or tinning which are other ways of obviously making something rust resistant the best way of making plain steel rust retardant is mirror polish it then blue it or black it um and that's what this is and so this has been you know this has been in all sorts of environments hot and cold it's been in sweaty training halls and it's I've taught classes armored fighting classes in all kinds of stuff and it it has had virtually no rust on it so the absolute biggest Advantage bluing or blacking is rust um rust fighting rust combating rust but I would add to that it needs to have a mirror polish for full effect it needs to have a mirror polish underneath the bluing or blacking so are there any other advantages to bluing or blacking well honestly I think probably not it apart from the fact it just looks really cool and I think in a world where lots of people have got um normal you know silver colored armor steel colored armor gilding your armor bluing your armor blacking your armor might make you stand out and I don't think it's an accident that although I'm sure there were some munition armors which were just blacked straight from the forge when we look at period artwork particularly Italian artwork where it's very clear that there is a darkened or blackened armor sometimes details are picked out with gilding so it's very clear that they weren't necessarily just doing the bluing or blacking just for rust retardance and just for you know economical whatever reasons not just you know straight from the forge but because they're going to the effort of gilding rolls and edges and details and stuff on that shows and that suggests that they're thinking about the overall effect and everybody knows that gold looks freaking awesome on blue or black they just they pop they absolutely go together whereas actually gilding on a silver surface is not so noticeable actually so I think sometimes it's essentially decorative potentially there's also it might tie in if you wear a um if you're aridus aridus if you wear a coat of arms if it has black as one of the colors in it that might tie in really well might make you stand out more look more impressive it could also just be fashion now um black was actually in clothing was a relatively expensive color in um in the medieval period it wasn't very easy to get really dark colors like that necessarily and so it could just be fashion reasons it could be at a certain point for example we think that quite a lot of blue dor there was quite a lot of blued armor in Flemish armor in from about 1470 onwards and so it could just be that in Flanders in the 1470s 1480s there was a fashion for dark armor and people liked the look of it they just you know that's how it works you know like the color of cars like we'll go through several years where white cars and red cars are really popular and then they become out of fashion and now it's silver cars and black cars and you know everything goes in Cycles like this and I suspect it was probably the same with armor as well so can you think of any other advantages of black armor for me it's really about rust retardance and and that is no that is a major major thing because as I say people I know who have armor spend so much time fighting fighting the rust uh and that would have been perhaps even more of a problem in the medieval period where let's face it even high status homes and castles and big Mana houses were a little bit damp they weren't as you know centrally heated and and you know double glazed as modern houses are so uh they weren't stored in plastic boxes like my armor is they were stored in wooden boxes in relatively damp conditions much of the time certainly in England so I don't think we that should be understated and that is I think the main reason I don't think there I mean you could think of silly fantasy reasons like stealth like fighting at night and things like this I don't think their reasons at all I'm sure Batman would choose armor like this but honestly in the 15th century I can't think of any other major reasons why you'd want black and armor apart from uh rust one and probably fashion two um but if you can think of other reasons post them down below uh genuinely I'd be really interested to see actually if you can come up with any really solid good ones think of something that really fits in the 15th century not a modern reason like you just like the look of black armor but but I mean that might apply to the 15th century but if you can tie it into that period I'd be really really interested to hear it anyway I'm sure some of you will be um uh anticipating what my next armor will be I will keep that secret for now in due course you will find out there are some interesting things to say about the new armor assuming that it fits okay and everything comes through and the um if it doesn't I'll probably have this for years but anyway at the moment this is up for sale the new armor hopefully will be a thing of future videos and it has this different type of armor got some different bits to it so things we can talk about in future videos anyway thanks a lot for watching I have been Easter and do you know what I think I will be next time as well I hope I'll see you there cheers folks thanks for watching we've got extra videos on patreon please give our Facebook a like And subscribe if you haven't already cheers folks

Channel: scholagladiatoria

Views: 193,595

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Id: gczkUru5E44

Length: 20min 13sec (1213 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 19 2024