What is Scale Armor? - Practical Aspects & Historical Overview

all right so today we're going to talk about armored spouses weight check my notes scale armor that's what it was so first I'm going to talk about some practical implications of scale armor and then give you a brief introduction about what we know about scale armor and history and then the next video is going to be some tests on scale or not this because that's too nice I got a very rusty scale armor that I got for that particular purpose this one here is not historical reproduction it's something that one of my subscribers made and send in thank you by the way more of a modern version inspired by historical scale and it's actually really nicely made it covers pretty well it's really comfortable there's no absolutely no so you feel it the the scales on this one are pretty thin checks we've got 0.8 millimeters oddly enough that's actually historical there were even thinner ones there are some fines of scales there are 0.5 millimeters so that is really astonishing these thin actually this is one of the major drawbacks off scale anything that comes in from underneath can actually slip through me risings rust that applies to this particular type of scale armor which is the most common there are other patterns as well which avoid that issue and I'll talk about those later a straight thrust from the front is not going to go anywhere as would be a download cost that would be particularly likely to just glance off and be redirected depending on how the scale is arranged a thrust could also go in between through scales not on this particular one but the one that I'm going to test you'll see that happen there so this actually better arranged it does protect very well against cots don't worry I'll be gentle that's what you always say so it doesn't really take away much of the force at the blunt impact if any particularly on the collarbone if something struck right here the collarbone is pretty exposed so that I don't know that selves not going to do that much if you have padding underneath however some kind of arming garment or gambeson something like that I would help distribute the force of the impact a little more and also I'm guessing I can't really prove it but I'm guessing that this is going to distribute the force more than male would simply because the individual pieces are larger this is of course also a lot more flexible than plate but not quite as flexible as male so see it does move pretty well but the they move more in larger clusters if you will does the individual scale of course it's not gonna flex so you have a larger non-flexible area compared to a single ring on male together with the curvature of the torso is more likely to just glance off you know not just thrusts but also concertina in tests where it would actually deflect the blade so it is pretty good protection even a fantasy leather armor with metal studs can be surprisingly protective against many sword cuts and well made riveted male is pretty much impervious to slicing cuts with most swords so scale armor is going to be even better against cuts and axe of course is a different story because it has a lot more mass in the blade it concentrates the force on a shorter edge and less of the edge is in contact with the armor so the Rings or scales can't distribute the force as widely and evenly it's easy to wear I can just about feel it on the shoulders and that's all it is it's and if you had a belt you wouldn't even just like with male because the belt would hold it here and take some of the weight off your shoulders I'm trying to figure out if it's it's it might probably you have pretty wide hips so and it's also more ventilated then plate would be look again Ola as much as male this is kind of in between male and harder Armour it does heat up on their here it does heat up me of course and particularly if you were to wear padding underneath those would've got pretty bad and you just Pat an armor by itself or at gambeson can they heat you up a lot if you have that underneath it's gonna be pretty bad so that's the usual problem but that's always the case with armor and it's loud so you're not gonna go assassin's creed in this it's just a be completely unrelated and irrelevant but fun observation if somebody were to fight you barehanded and throw an uppercut they would skin their knuckles basically on this again it's not like that would have happened but it's kind of fun to think about you're pretty damn drunk if you stir or not bucket against us pretty much or if you go ahead that's also not gonna be fun anyway let's get to that a stronger part so first off how does one even define scale armor and distinguish it from lamellar the two will often use interchangeably have often seen lamellar arm or at least what I would consider to be lamellar armor called scale armor I'm not an expert on armor but in the book armor Neverwhere is by Timothy Dawson he gives a pretty good definition scale armor overlaps downward and is predominantly mounted on a continuous substrate usually of textile or leather lamellar overlaps upwards does not have a continuous substrate and its structure is created using some sort of cordage and as the author points out here there are a few exceptions there are always exceptions but it seems to apply pretty well in general the main exception here is the early Roman Imperial semi-rigid scale armor it looks a lot more like lamellar at first glance but the pieces still overlap downwards so it's still somewhat falls under this definition either way you could argue whether this should be called a lamellar or scale armor and so often there are some gray area the author also defines five distinct types type one and two were the most common they were used in a lot of different places and time periods type three is rare it's apparently almost exclusively found in medieval Russia of type four are from Late Antiquity generally Roman although one can exclude the possibility of type four in medieval times were most of the evidence is actually depictions and art rather than archaeological finds and type five is Roman used from the second to fourth centuries this type wasn't very common even in the Roman Empire if you recall what I said earlier about the risk of upward thrust slipping under the scales type three and five would eliminate that they would hold together so a blade couldn't lift up scales and slip under that way which makes me wonder why they weren't more common relative to the other types I'm guessing this may just be a matter of time and effort because these would be more difficult and time-consuming to make and sometimes for war you just have to crank out the armors so that could be a factor as the earliest surviving example the armor from King Tutankhamun's tomb was often mentioned which would be over four thousand years old to me this looks more like lamellar it was apparently made from rawhide and is an astonishing condition considering the age so I guess whether this is scale or lamb Lara is debatable there are many examples of ancient Greek and Eurasian scale armors the Greek ones are made of bronze scales with a distinctive central ridge and the Eurasian one on the right is made of leather one of the few cases where leather was actually preserved and this looks like a lot of work it's quite a large number of comparatively small scales and then as already mentioned before Roman scale armor or lorica schemata these could be made either of bronze or iron from what I can tell bronze seems to have been more common or at least more commonly found bronze tends to preserve better in the ground than iron does and I said some of the types look a lot like lamellar except for the downward overlap I also found a depiction of Dacian scale armor from Trajan's column now whether that is accurate or not I don't know for sure the Romans are known for taking artistic license every now and then there's an example of Persian sassanid horse armor on the left the picture on the right might be somewhat inaccurate I don't know about that but I included it because it looks pretty neat that's sometimes all the reason you need from what I've read scale armor was in general relatively common in the early Middle Ages then rarer in the 11th and 12th century and then it disappeared by the mid 14th century and evidence for medieval scale armor seems to be mostly depictions rather than material finds from the Battle of lys P there are some fines of lamellar Armour and also another type of armour the coat of plates which can look like scale at first glance but is different some people have argued that the Bayeux Tapestry shows not only male but also scale armor we know that male Hall Burks were commonly worn both by Saxon and Norman warriors about the scale I doubt it they just had to depict male with these large rings because of the limitations of the medium they could only produce so much detail there's one piece of potential pictorial evidence for Saxons scale armor and that's this one I don't know enough about it to judge its accuracy but it seems safe to say that if the Saxons or Normans had scale armor it was rare and possibly not even made by them and same for the Vikings they might have gotten it elsewhere but they probably didn't make it themselves either way there are a few medieval depictions that look more obviously like scale and are distinct from images of male armor and here's a rare oddity a 16th century Italian steel breastplate with bone scales on top I don't think that counts as scale armor there are some outliers in later times like pieces of scale armor found in New Mexico used by Spanish conquistadors and polish who saw armor from between the 17th and 18th century and finally I saved the strangest one for last here's an armour coat from early 19th century India made of gold decorated Pangolin scales I'm guessing this might also be where the idea originated people looking at animals with protective scales and unfitting you know what our exposed flimsy human skin could use an upgrade I want that anyway so this is just a brief overview you could obviously spend hours talking about this but I try to cram as much information into the video as possible without making it too long so you might want to watch it several times to absorb all of it so the next video is going to be shooting scale armor with a crossbow and a few other things so that will be uploaded the day after this and as soon as it's up I'll put the link in the video description down below will you'll also find links to the sources I've used and if you've enjoyed this you know what to do there's convenient buttons down there with which you can you know spread the thing and express your opinion of it and so on and so forth anyway thanks for watching folks have a good one and stay tuned for part two [Music] you

Channel: Skallagrim

Views: 1,258,751

Keywords: Skall, Skallagrim, fantasy, medieval, historical, scale, armor, armour, hauberk, suit, mail, coat, plates, history, overview, introduction, explained, middle ages, ancient, antiquity, greek, roman, scythian, leather, lamellar, protection, protective, value, practical, pros, cons, effective, RPG, roleplaying, game, warrior, armored, viking, saxon, norman, egyptian, egypt, tutankhamun, flexibility, effectiveness, breastplate, bronze, pangolin, lorica, squamata, archaeological, archaeology, evidence, finds, images, persian, polish, hussar, russian

Id: szhiOuGjYLA

Length: 11min 41sec (701 seconds)

Published: Sat May 19 2018