Making leather shield armour - Impenetrable?

now it has in fact deformed a  little bit it is flesh side outward it's just making sure that it's  properly wet with glue we're covering it and then we're on [Music]   Hi it's Tod from Tod's Workshop and Tod Cutler  here and today we are going to be looking at   Shields again now I did this with the lockdown  Longbow my my Longbow simulator about two years   ago something like that two and a half years ago  and it was interesting because this Shield here   it's made of Poplar it's about 15 millimeters  thick it's got canvas and gesso inside and out   it's made basically like a 14th century Shield  would have been made but what you need to know is   one of the comments at the original time was about  how to make the shield more protective than it   seemed to be and a guy called Stephen Curtin came  up in the comments and he told me about a recipe   that was in the Ashmolean Museum that is only  only eight miles from where we are now and this   is the recipe it's a mixture of Old English and  my Modern English translation take leather that is   half tanned and dry it and shave it on the flesh  side and take glue with water and set that glue on   the fire and melt it with the water and then hotly  apply it upon the leather on the flesh side of the   leather for and strew upon that a powder of glass  and iron filings that has been mixed together   and then lay another piece of the same leather  flesh side to flesh side and nail it onto the   shield and let it dry and then neither spear nor  edged tool will enter therein - won't go through   how very cool is that so we actually have a  recipe thanks to the Ashmolean Stephen Curtin   for how to protect the shield and  to stop well it doesn't say arrows   but it says Spears and Edged tools  swords axes going through this Shield   hopefully arrows, let's find out maybe not  but that is the point of all these videos I   don't know you don't know we don't know don't  know what's going to happen let's go find out   why do I want to find out well this is  actually really quite important because   if you look again at the comments in these films  people are going well your shield is rubbish the   arrows are going clean through and they did. They  went through if if you just took a dry Arrow like   this which has no grease or wax upon it it goes  to about 10 centimeters I think from memory two   years ago now 10 centimeters well that's enough  to go through your arm because there's no other   protection here there's no steel plates there's  no mail sewn in behind here you might think that   there should be but there wasn't so that would  go straight through your arm 20 centimeters   well that can now start to go into your body  and if nothing else 20 centimeters sticking   through the back is a massive encumbrance to  where you want to move your Shield you can't   remove them I did another film on that you see  me clumsily trying to cut them away with an ax   so the thing is it's not easy to work with a  shield which has got great big things sticking out   you you don't want it but yet they did so I'm  going to explain this recipe a bit more while   we're starting to heat up our pan here on our  lovely barbecue and we're going to get all our   glue and everything up to temperature all right  but it's not an episode of cooking with Tod it's   not that but don't forget todcutler.com we do  loads of Cleavers cooking knives eating knives   feasting it it's all there it's all available on  Todd cutler.com but that's not what this is about   this is about cooking on gas making some glue and  protecting our Shield let's break this recipe down   take leather that is half tanned and dry it and  shave the flesh side so half tanned leather well   some of you will be familiar with it most of you  not on the left hand side we have half tan and you   can see the white core in the middle right hand  side we have a regular leather and then you have   the the outer part of it and the flesh  side the flesh side is quite literally   the side of the leather that was against  the muscle right and the fat and that is   what in modern terms would be called the  suede side so if we go back to our recipe and you take the glue with the  water and set it over the fire well   we've got our fire here and the glue well  it's an animal glue it is um a horn glue   rabbit skin glue fish glue something like  that but it's all basically collagen based   it's jelly in our modern world it's literally the  jelly that we eat that is what animal glue is and   so you make your your jelly your animal glue you  heat it up in a pan this one is an iron pan you   can see it from the rust and we'll come to that  and you get it all hot and you put it up on the   leather on the flesh side so the suede side of the  leather and you screw on it the powder of glass so   first of all I am not going to follow that  recipe slavishly and there is a reason for this   that half tan leather is well it's difficult to  deal with now if I just paint that glue on the   flesh side of here it won't penetrate the Rawhide  I can promise you of that it'll take days and   days to soften that Rawhide down doing that so it  won't actually adhere and be tight onto the shield   because it has its natural warps and movements so  I'm going to get this properly wet so I'm going to   soak it in our glue mixture now there's another  reason for that now I've done tests with it and   you can go online you can look up" cuir bouilli" and then you you see people doing it with wax or   pouring on water or oil and all sorts of things  personally I think that's all Guff I think it was   done with glue and there is a very real reason  for that if you're familiar with how fiberglass   is made you have these glass fibers they're not  intrinsically; they're good in tension but they're   not stiff they're not strong you pack that fabric  you pack it out with polyester resin or epoxy   resin that's brittle it's not strong in its own  right either but you combine the two and you end   up with something incredibly tough and moldable  and you sit everywhere in the modern world   if you take your collagen fibers that this  leather is full of and you pack the gaps   with a brittle glue like a hide glue it basically  creates like a leather fiberglass you can mold it   you can shape it it dries it becomes hard as  you like brilliant stuff and I did videos on   that as well where we're looking at a hardened  armor look at this that is a piece of leather   okay leather and jelly with a  three ply just see what we do and that one maybe about six millimeters through  so I'm gonna wet this material down and get it   thoroughly wet and that's going to take all day  now we're just going to put our gelatin in just   ordinary cooking gelatin nothing special not  actually the jelly that you uh the dessert jelly (jello)  because that's got a lot of sugar in it it's  mostly sugar in fact this stuff either pork or   beef gelatin put it in and now you need to get  it hot bit hotter than your hand will stand but   not really hot and the thing is you don't want it  really hot because otherwise it starts to break   down the material in the glue so I've just left  this material now this glue for a little while   but you can see that there's a bit of steam coming  off here and I think this is what the whole thing   about cuir bouilli it means boiled leather is  all about is the people who drew the pictures   it's peasants (monks more likely) doing this work they're not  going to go and talk to them all they see   is a big Boiling Pot or a big steaming pot and  there's a bit of steam coming off here even on a   hot day you can see it maybe not on camera and I  think that they just looked at it and went steam   coming off a big pot they're boiling the lever  but actually the boiling of the leather it just   destroys the structure of the leather this way  you make the the glue absolutely as liquid as   it'll ever be soaks into the leather when the  leather cools and dries you end up with this   glue collagen leather matrix and it's tough as  you like brilliant stuff again I mean I'll just   show a clip here this is genuinely just a piece of  leather and I've used it to cut wood look at this so it's chipped it sure it's chipped it but  that's a fence post and this is leather I'm   going to leave this glue now to dissolve a little  bit and then we're going to put the leather in it   but we're going to come to that for in a while but  the next one is powdered glass I have a feeling   that I'm going to regret using powder glass but it  specifically says it so I've made myself a mortar   steel not brass I don't suppose that matters I'm  going to crush the glass well to a powder that's   all it says it doesn't give any indication of how  big that should be small bottle s got my mortise here we come can't help thinking a bit  of health and safety might be in order well I think I may have fallen at the first hill  that is incredibly tough and there we have it so   not that powdered I'm also going to put the  very noisy extractor fan on because I'm not   feeling very good about this really um anyway  technique changed we'll get there in the end getting better I guess I'm a specific really so  I've smashed my glass up and I'm going to sieve   that in a minute but in the meantime now our glue  is up to temperature so I'm going to start to get   this leather in now obviously it's a little bit  bigger than the pan hopefully with a bit of you   can hear it now that's that is what half Tan's  about it's amazing stuff so hopefully that's   all going to soften down and actually well fit in  the pan sooner or later there we go so it's going   to take even at this temperature it's going to  take I don't know 10-15 minutes I would thought   before I can even fold it back in it's not getting  passer into a pan anyway we'll deal with that in a   bit so we're going to sift the glass now but  I'm going to do that uh with my mask back on all right it's pretty so it's a mixture of  slightly larger chunks and powder pretty   much as I would expect it to come out of a  mortise I'm just gonna go wash my hands now   so it's very specific here that it is iron  filings and glass powder so they've really   tried to achieve something very specific with this  recipe and it is a composite armor and it is many   layers so if we think about what it's going to be  like if we take our shield by the time it'll be   finished you have got on the outside you've got  well somewhere between a soft and a hard leather   with with the glue impregnation then you've got  Rawhide then you've got the leather layer again   then you have the glass glue and iron composite  layer then you've got the softer leather then   you've got the Rawhide then you've got the softer  leather again then you've got 15 mm Poplar and   you've got a layer for what it's worth of canvas  and gesso on the inside that is a lot of layers   with different properties this arrow, spear, axe, has  got to get through I am fascinated to find out if   it works and what the hell they were getting at  so I'm going to work a little bit quickly now and   so I've got Jenny here who's going to help out  basically just handling things as we go through   now I'm going to take the first bit of leather  out and we're going to nail it onto our Shield now it has in fact deformed a little  bit because I got it too hot that's   exactly the problem with boiling leather so  we're going to see if we can take that out so this flash side oh slimy stuff it is  flesh side outward because that is the side   that we are going to stick our powder of  iron and glass onto let's do the middle of that yeah so I'm just tacking this down at the moment  and then once this is all sort of done   and in place uh let's spin that for around ah  then okay I'm gonna have I'm gonna have to I've   messed up I've messed up I'm gonna have to put  a cut in that to get it down back in a minute   so this is really annoying because actually  it's exactly this that I didn't want to do but   I'm gonna have to put a little  Dart in there that's really annoying anyway although I suppose this is exactly the sort  of problems that they would have faced but   they would have had some little boy there  sitting there stirring it instead of me   who is actually going off to do some  functional work anyway let's get that so we will have to bear that in mind if we  get any strikes on exactly that area there   just going to try and pin it down as best I can so we have our leather down onto the shield  now and as you can tell that was hard enough   actually even though it's softened off it's  been in there for about an hour an hour and   a half so now we're going to uh smear it a  glue and then we're going to stir it with   our powder as per the recipe so this is  cooling down now and actually that means   that all the jelly is sort of stiffening  up you can warm it over a fire a little bit   and that will warm it again but anyway now we're  just making sure that it's properly wet with glue   so this is a little bit stronger  than what I've soaked it in   so this is more akin to what you'd use on  furniture or something like that and then we're covering it with our mixture I don't know  how to thick to do it so I suppose it's probably a   bit like you know when you're a kid doing glitter  you put a load on then you shake it off and what's   off is off oh if you're British I'm just going  to say Blue Peter at you you'll know exactly   what I mean right well actually that's Worthy  I'll show into camera look at that for a mess   so we've got the top half of the shield which is  covered in our first layer of leather and then a   layer of uh this glass and iron well mixture  our next piece of leather just going to move   that well out of the way and this one we're going  to nail all around the perimeter so this piece of   leather now is flat now remember according  to the recipe it is flesh side inward again   so I'm just going to make sure we've got  nice good gloopy glue on it thick pasty glue and then we're on so oh I'm already  getting cut right then let's go   oh God this is just one big mess I can tell you  if this is actually what they did I would not have   wanted to be a professional Shield maker because  you would have a million glass cuts   about to abandon the gloves can't do  it everything's just gone too sticky this is what I do for you so I've nailed all the way around the outside  but the thing is this is a sort of a dry powder   mix that's gone in and there says glue there  and everything I don't know how it's going to   stand up to being jiggled about you know  riding on a horse the recipe doesn't say   either but what I'm going to do is I'm gonna put  in a few more Nails just to help pin it all down and that is Jenny um Excuse me while I go and  wash my hands so we've finished this stage of   our making so we have a shield which is canvas  backed 15 millimeter Poplar in this case could   be lime wood both good traditional Woods  for Shields but they're tough and they're   light not Oak not Ash and that means of course  historically without any other armoring on it   arrows can go through I've shown that I've  sewed that before with the lockdown Longbow   certainly with like Viking Shields and stuff  like that they didn't do this necessarily but   again Shields are not they are not impenetrable  things they help you they don't solve all your   problems this according to our 13th 14th century  recipe from the Ashmolean Museum does solve all   your problems that is a big boast no spear no  edged at all we'll go through this apparently   well you know what the lockdown Longbow is coming  back in the 160 pound variety and the 120 pound   variety and we're going to see if it can send  Longbow arrows through this but that'll be a   few weeks away yet because we've got to cover it  in canvas you know I've got to get it all dressed   up I've got to get it finished as a shield but  just make sure you don't miss it so sign up for   the channel turn your bell notifications on and  while you're at it come down to 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Channel: Tod's Workshop

Views: 111,428

Keywords: Medieval, Tod's Workshop, History

Id: oGYRM0AmCx4

Length: 17min 51sec (1071 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 02 2023