Would You Survive a Fight in Pop Tab Chainmail?

today we find out if the pop tab is mightier than the sword [Music] even a simple Google image search for pop tab chain maille turns up hundreds of results people are even selling this stuff on Etsy as far as I'm aware though nobody's really tested whether it'll actually hold up to a proper blow from a sword and while it might seem obvious that it won't thing is it just might see from what I've read chainmail was primarily intended to protect you from slicing attacks that said traditional chainmail would have been made from steel rings not aluminium and steel is much more resilient because of the way that chainmail protects you even for as flimsy as pop tabs are I think we might just get away with our lives to keep things interesting I've decided to use two swords a nice sturdy one that I found online and one that I'm making from heavy-duty aluminum foil honestly I'm just curious to see if there's any difference in results between them all right with the background out of the way let's get into the build so I actually scooped this package of 10,000 pop tabs from ebay for only about 40 bucks supposedly these are high-quality pop tabs I don't really know what that means but I assume it's a good thing but they just loose in here oh that's hilarious dude I feel like the Scrooge McDuck of pop tabs right so with so many tabs there's actually a method here the first step is to remove these awkward little ring from your tab next up we got to cut the tabs so I'm just gonna line that up with the middle there apparently the staple remover gives the perfect amount of Bend here's if we're gonna bend down and then apparently this is your link so I'm gonna see if I could enlist some buddies to help so this might not look like a lot but this is about one third of the box that we started out with I think this is roughly enough I think it's just gonna be better to kind of get started like I showed way at the beginning the tabs basically just linked to each other what I'm learning I don't show you up close the easiest way I'm finding the link these together is actually to put them down on the table and then kind of just push down and slide to link them together the other thing is because they're metal if they don't stretch like a t-shirt but it should be about t-shirt sized so I'm thinking about just going for like kind of a big scoop neck so let's recap this guy right here has been outfitted fully in an aluminum pop tab chainmail suit feels pretty protective looks pretty good so to test this guy out we're obviously gonna need some kind of a blade I picked up an actual sword online the other thing I want to try though is actually making an aluminum sword alrighty so while I was at the store the other day picking up some stuff I got this official note brand aluminum foil I think I'm gonna try it out lighting like a general sword shape and then using a bunch of layers kind of folded back and forth and then see if I can hammer it over itself to kind of attempt to forge this a little bit we're gonna be applying heat to let the metal melt into itself alright that's doing crap what's your idea the only thing that I could think is if you had sharp edge where you would be applying more pressure to one particular spot definitely making the middle all right so what we're gonna attempt now is we're gonna try rolling this and they kind of like one piece rather than folding it over afterward I think that that was just causing it to separate as I tried to hammer it into itself this work time we're gonna try to make more of like a rod or a tube and then flatten that and now I'm gonna pound it after applying some heat I could do a longer piece like I was doing yesterday but I think that honestly I'm not gonna be able to get an edge on this so there's not much reason to make it really long I'm gonna try to focus on getting a good point on it so there's the potential frisk to stab through the armor rather than to slice through and after taking them to the sander I'm actually getting kind of an edge on it I just tested it out on this piece of paper and it does indeed stab I think that this is what we're gonna go with them so now we're onto our other option which is an actual freaking sword look at this thing you can tell that it's pretty crappy quality but it is full tang so it should since it's high carbon steel be theoretically battle-ready when these come from China they are not sharp at all look at this I'm really trying to kill myself and we needed a way to sharpen it now I am NOT a short sharpening expert but apparently people say online that you can use these things which I mean it's a handheld kitchen knife sharpener so we're gonna take a stab at that for some reason I'm having a bit of a difficult time getting this one side to sharpen I'm using this knife sharpener which should just be putting an edge straight on here that's basically the same as a knife edge but the problem I'm having and I'm not sure whether it's due the quality of the steel or the way that I'm using the knife sharpener or whatever but I can't seem to get like a very good consistent edge on here for example it'll be sharp in one section of the blade but then in a different section it won't be sharp at all I'm not sure why this is happening but I think that it has to do with this sharpener kind of messing up the geometry of the blade itself so if I want to put an edge on it I think I'm gonna need a different approach using a grinder will get us close enough to have a good edge now to be honest I don't really know what I'm doing with this grinding wheel so I've got my dad here to help me out who I mean he owns the grinding wheel most important thing is that you just try to approximate a 30-degree angle since that's the angle at which you want your blade to be cut that looks pretty promising on just getting good I got to go back to the other side now if you want the this part of the blade I need to reset the jig because this is about a half an inch wider than it is here I think that probably we won't need it it seems to me that ideally the front part of the sword is where you'd be striking anyway right that's where you're gonna get the most power [Music] that that is sharp as a sharp thing how do we want to put a tip on it that looks respectable since we needed some open space to test our chainmail we headed out to knock noles Park to compensate for the fact that our dummy stumpy isn't the actual weight of a person I've staked his feet to the ground and rigged him up on this tree here so that so that he doesn't move as much when he gets hit by our swords now to test out our armor we've got two swords we've got this sword which is an actual sword that I got online and then we have this sword which I tried to make out of tinfoil the aluminum foil sword doesn't really hold much of an edge but we're gonna try stabbing with this sword and since I have the least hope in this one working this is what's gonna go first and then we'll move on to the big one sweet all right let's get playing so we're gonna start out with this guy right here this is the aluminum sword that I made out of tin foil the thing about this one is that you can't actually really put an edge on tin foil so this one I'm only gonna try to stab it let's see what happens I'm aiming for right there all right three two one let me try to follow through that a little better three two one so that's a negatory on that guy let's see if I can do it one more time yeah that's that's not doing squat as expected a bit of a bust all right now we're gonna try slicing with the sword my prediction is that this still won't work because chainmail is specifically designed to protect against slashing attacks I still think this is gonna work pretty well let's test it out to see three two one we got a dent here so you can see that it's like pretty well dented and there's definitely a line where it hit but it didn't actually go through because of course when you've got an edge like this as sharp as it may be you're still probably gonna have a tough time getting through any kind of like armor because the shoe it just can't shear through it I'm gonna give it one more swing just to give it a fair shot this time I'm gonna try swinging a little bit up three two one well that actually it did disassemble our pop tab chainmail but I don't know if it really got through I guess it got through in the sense that our dude is dead now but I mean or at least you know wounded all right let's also see what happens if we take another swing at it with the shirt exposed I want to see if we can get through with a slice three two one actually I didn't get through I'm gonna try and hit it more with the tip and see if I can kind of cut in 3 2 1 there we go that got it so I didn't get through all the duct tape like skin is softer than duct tape so if you were going for that you definitely have injured your opponent alright so although we already got through with the swing I want to try giving it a stab I'm going to stab right about here where the armor is still pretty intact and see if I can actually get through it 3 2 1 [Music] hey that busted right through let's see how far it got in oh that's that's quite a bit I granted it's not an actual person right but still that's probably about nine inches yeah we got through the duct tape as well so it didn't just indent it it actually went all the way in so what we learned we learned that as long as you're using aluminum or lightweight weapons probably going up against pop tap chainmail will actually protect you but anything with any kind of weight or real power behind it it's gonna bust right through we don't have a perfect edge on this sword and we were still able to get through pretty easily but because of the way these are clipped together I think that it's just not strong enough to stay as one piece when you swing at it you're going up against chainmail because it's designed to protect against slashing I think that if you can get a stab in that's probably better of course the reason that it breaks when you stab through it is that you can actually see that like on this one where we stab through it did actually go through in the spot of the pop tab where we had bent it because you're only contacting one or two pop tabs at a time it's actually pretty easy for the tip of the sword which is made out of also a harder metal to get right through that soft aluminum so should you take your pop tab chainmail to a sword fight I'm gonna have to say probably not thanks for watching I'll see you guys next time peace [Music] you

Channel: Louis Weisz

Views: 4,800,187

Keywords: Louis Weisz, Weiszcracks, chainmail, pop tab chainmail, pop tab, diy, larp, armor, sword, real sword, aluminum sword, aluminum foil sword, soda tab, aluminum, maille, testing maille, medival, mythbusters, maker, cheap armor, diy armor, cosplay

Id: QgbVl3AjK6k

Length: 11min 57sec (717 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 05 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/harris5]

I don't want to crap all over the video, so I'll just make one point. If you think the pop tabs had any defensive value, keep in mind his "sword" had difficulty cutting a T-shirt. This is not strong or durable stuff.

Butted mail in general tends to come apart with wear. These are made of soft metal with gigantic splits in the rings. It's going to dissolve as you run around in it. Even if it fits the aesthetic of a post-apocalyptic larp, this may not be a good item for anything longer than costume photos.

[u/va_wanderer]

Poptab armor is...pretty much what you might expect given the materials.

It's not really "protective" anything. It's soft, butted-together armor. Costume? Sure. I've literally had to pick up a "hauberk" someone made of this stuff because he ran around the woods in the dark, during camp clean up.

Caught a sleeve on a branch in the dark. It actually tore off the torso (found it still hanging there). Fell down a hill afterwards. I ended up with most of what was left in small pieces gathered up in a trash bag because he ended up in a pricker bush afterwards and it ended up finishing the job when he tried to thrash his way out. Didn't weigh much, as you probably guessed from the other posts.

(Ironically, the gambeson he had on was a real one and he suffered no real harm from the branch or the bush.)

Sharkmail/Ringmesh FTW if you want lightweight mail-type armor. Aluminum PLATES can be nice, especially in a coat-of-plate deal but even those will dent with enough impact.

Like someone dropping you off a balcony onto a rock below. Ow. I can still feel that one decades later...

[u/Kelmon80]

Any item of armor has some protective value, under the right circumstances. Even this nonsense. If the question is whether this kind of armor is better than nothing....then yeah, I would rather wear this than just a t-shirt in a knife fight, assuming it doesn't restrict my movement in a significant way. It's soft metal and it falls apart easy - but if it only deflects one knife cut, then it's better than nothing.

I woudn't ever want to see it in a fantasy, let alone historical LARP, though. I could see it as a sort of improvised modern/post-apocalyptic armor, perhaps.

[u/SheeptarTheSheepKing]

This was a pretty fun video. I enjoyed watching it.

[u/Jonatc87]

TIL poptab chainmail is a thing and actually looks pretty decent for larp. Is it still as heavy as real/lightweight chainmail?

[u/CakeDragon]

This would make some decent post-apoc chainmail!