Medieval Crossbows vs. Breastplate and Lamellar Armor

time for more crossbow tests i got some discounted armor from cult of athena with minor defects first up is a reproduction of the cherberg number 13 breastplate made by lord of battles at this price you can't expect 100 accurate replica and there are noticeable differences it's made of 16 gauge steel which is about 1.6 millimeters thick historical armor was not uniform the thickness could vary even on the same breastplate from one to three millimeters so anything between 10 and 20 gauge the front center for example was usually thicker than the sides and back i haven't been able to find the exact measurements of the original cherbourg armor but either way 16 gauge seems like a reasonable thickness although some folks prefer 14 gauge for reenactment and such the defect on this armor is that one of the side plates are not attached so no big deal by the way if you're wondering about this lever looking thing that's a lens rest please keep in mind that this is not a scientific test it's just meant to provide entertainment and a general idea of what armor and crossbows can be capable of the armor as i said not a fully accurate replica also my budget is limited and i have to take what i can get so anachronisms are bound to happen the original armor is from the late 14th century while the reproduction crossbows are a little later 15th century at that time full plate armor had established itself the cherbourg armor on the other hand is a transitional form with plenty of mail worn together with a comparatively small breastplate finally if you want to know more about the crossbows check out the links in the video description below first the lighter crossbow it has a draw weight of 160 kilograms or 350 pounds and requires a goat's foot lever to span on to the heavy crossbow this one has a draw weight of close to a thousand pounds 976 to be exact which is 442 kilograms we got some holes here but the wearer would be perfectly fine underneath and what happened here fortunately it didn't shatter which is what i thought at first but it looks like the glue just failed so this just slipped out and it also flattened the tip quite noticeably it's definitely a noticeable dentist it's more noticeable in the video actually but uh didn't penetrate now this could still be bad if it dense enough to constrict your breathing and things like that but with the padding there's lots of room for error so to speak for comparison what can a blacksmith with a warhammer do it's a little difficult to see how the original breastplate is constructed because it's got some sort of covering inside but the problem with the reproduction is that the individual plates are connected with nothing but a piece of leather and the rivets were ripped out of the leather from the impact that's a structural weakness even so the armor did its job some of the hits might not even have been painful to the wearer and i don't think any of them would have caused anything more than bruises well the first round of testing wasn't quite what i was hoping for because we were running out of light so it's a bit earlier today even though the light is already kind of dubious but we'll see what we can do so okay so here is where it hit i've just used tape on the previous hole so i know what's new and what's old so that really didn't do much however it didn't mess with the bolt okay that's that's where it broke it's not too terrible i guess yeah okay this is kind of in the wrong order but uh i didn't even want to shoot this one again against the armor because there's not much point if the almost thousand pound crossbow can't do it and this can't either and i've done that before in worse light but you know what the heck just just once more this is quite a thick point here hopefully it won't get damaged but we'll see all right here's the hit it did some visible damage but it wouldn't really bother the wearer underneath there's just a little bit of a dent on the inside but hardly worth mentioning i don't even think this would hurt now through the plate and the padding i think you'd be fine same bolt with the heavy crossbow and i don't think i have to take that many more shots against this armor it's pretty obvious that it works it's better than braking but i'm definitely not happy with this clue here is the hit and you can see it it dented it quite a bit and on this side you can see that these two plates are shifting they're drifting apart more and more so uh one of the strikes with the warhammer definitely did quite a bit to dent this in and separate it from the other plate and the more impact you get here the worse it is of course so the more damage it gets the harder it would be to move in this it didn't penetrate though so if you're wondering you know how did anybody in plate armor ever die and well if you think this is what that hit if this had hit just you know a centimeter or two to the further to the right then this would have hit male now later armor covers more completely so there are fewer vulnerable gaps but there will still be some and even if not this kind of deformation here can be a problem you know it it'll dig in now with the padding underneath i don't think this would cause that much of a problem yet but again it'll reduce the wearer's mobility and it'll cause problems over time you can see that it sits kind of weird on there now so let's see what a point like that can do against softer material so as you can see no trouble right there and it's pretty solidly in the gel all right let's see what happens with the light crossbow and it really is it feels much lighter than the other one it's easier to use well it went through but it's not really all that deep well i mean this would hurt no doubt about it but uh might not be lethal depends on exactly where it hits as you can see this is not a very long distance it's about seven or eight meters and of course on the battlefield they would shoot at far further distances it might not even penetrate far past the gambeson at all i also got an armor made of 20 gauge steel lamellar plates i don't know much about this type of armor but i can say two things about that particular reproduction or interpretation one 20 gauge or about one millimeter is really thin even considering the overlap between the plates and two those are some dubious leather strings [ __ ] seriously what other scrotum leather all right let's see what it can do against lamelar okay so it bounced off it looks like the armor did protect it's nothing here but that's quite a bit of damage so you can see what happened is the the leather strings just ripped and the plate here or the lamellar is dented not severely but it is noticeable with a tighter fit this might not necessarily happen i actually wanted to attach this better but uh whoever made these did not do a great job with these strings here so that's what you have you're supposed to pass through the hole here and then tie but when i try this ripped off immediately okay so that did make a difference and see there is a little bit of deformation here but not that much so when the armor is actually firm against the padding and the body it doesn't cave in like it did before so it's actually doing a pretty good job okay time for the heavy crossbow brace for impact yeah i did a little more than the other one it really drove that lamellar in but that's almost folded ripped out here yeah you can see right here that bent very substantially and it was driven pretty deep against the torso so this could potentially worst case scenario cracker rib it's still better than being impaled right it looks like this is the right bolt for softening it up because this really breaks the armor apart it rips out the leather strips completely and uh it probably does some it's quite a bit of blunt impact shock underneath not fun but definitely survivable so if you're unlucky while wearing armor some bastard might hit you twice in the same spot all right one more shot with the heavy crossbow and i think that shall suffice for now well i did not expect that but it actually pierced the steel went all the way through and as you can see it uh bend it to a 90 degree angle that's pretty impressive all right that's it for right now hope you enjoyed it and thanks for [Music] watching [Music] you

Channel: Skallagrim

Views: 1,844,112

Keywords: Skall, Skallagrim, fantasy, medieval, historical, reproduction, middle ages, crossbow, 15th, century, Churburg, breastplate, plate, armor, armour, platemail, lamellar, steel, bolts, arrows, vs, versus, tested, testing, test, demonstration, effect, protection, armored, padded, jacket, coat, gambeson, padding, range, damage, ballistic, gel, history, battlefield, crossbowman, xbow, Chivalry, Skyrim, windlass, cranked, spanned, cranking, lever, draw, weight, power, impact, hit, powerful

Id: XMT6hjwY8NQ

Length: 13min 0sec (780 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 13 2017