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Randall Moffett
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 Posted: Thu 03 May, 2012 6:13 am Post subject: |
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Well Cole good to hear he is moving forward. Sounds like he is a decent chap and is trying, which is much better than some. My wife had a teacher that told her no progress was made during the medieval period, I sent him a score of pages of some advances listed single space in list format to which he replied they were not really that important?- only a few things that sort of set Western Europe up to be major global powers over much of the modern period ....
Maybe you have started him on a path that next term he will improve.
Now as to the wind being knocked out of him. Having been tossed by a horse, I had the wind knocked out of me. No armour. Interesting thing, fell from horse in armour and had wind knocked out of me.
Now I am not sure there is any more or less a tie to the armour as to being thrown from a horse.
Robin,
Until they start with professional editors on Wiki it will never be on the same level as those that do. I agree that they have made some great changes the last few years. I have even added or changed some of the articles in the past so I do not think of it as without merit only of limited use. The issue is there are still many entries that are either iffy or wrong.
Take a look at the Coat of Plates ones. Part seems to be well done and other parts..... less so. It'd be nice if some one would add some info about period correct terms in Western Europe as well.
RPM
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David Gaál
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| Posted: Thu 03 May, 2012 9:07 am Post subject: |
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I thinks your professor should read Alan Williams: The knight and the blast furnace(what if not a professor shall convince an other professor) and other works by Alan Williams, there he can see how steel was made and could read about concrete measurements. http://www.metmuseum.org/pubs/journals/1/pdf/...nnered.pdf an example of the free available works from him, he writes down many things about the making of steel.
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Gary Teuscher
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| Posted: Thu 03 May, 2012 11:33 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Earlier plate armor was heavier (I said iron doesn't weight significantly more than steel) to which he responded that it was cast iron(?) so it had to be made thicker, and these early examples of armor generally don't survive because they rusted |
I wonder if he has somehow incorrectly rationalized the thought that a mail plate and gambeson Harness would weigh more than an articulated plate one?
I have heard this is correct, but have never figured the Math on it.
I wonder what a later set of articulated plate and arming doublet would weigh vs. a full maill hauberk, chausses, Gambeson, great helm and plate additions for the back and breast, aillettes, coudes, poleyns and demi-greaves?
Of course he is missing the point by his statement if trying to make this comparison, as it's not heavy plate vs lighter plate, but mail and plate vs plate.
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Kurt Scholz
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| Posted: Thu 03 May, 2012 1:53 pm Post subject: |
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| Cole B wrote: | Update for you guys. Had a short chat with him this morning before class. He did watch the video I sent yesterday (The MET one you all are probably familiar with) which is more than I was expecting actually.
I think he has somewhat moderated his position in his head, but didn't want to flat out admit he was wrong in his lecture. (Armor weighing more than a knight did, 2-3 people required to help someone up)
His points and where I disagree but didn't have time to debate
The MET video is reactionary against the Hollywood myths (needing a crane to get on horse, etc) but goes too far in the other direction, only using the highest tier armor that would be owned by Monarchs as examples when they aren't accurate as far as what the average or poor knight would have worn
A knight participating in jousts generally had a certain level of wealth and a support system under him, the idea of poor knights jousting in ultra-crappy heavy armor seems silly. The most expensive armor was probably that way due to artistry/stylization and not a -significant- function improvement.
Earlier plate armor was heavier (I said iron doesn't weight significantly more than steel) to which he responded that it was cast iron(?) so it had to be made thicker, and these early examples of armor generally don't survive because they rusted
The idea that they used cast iron doesn't sound right to me, but I could be wrong. And in general there is a certain level of mobility anyone wearing armor would require that they can't compromise further on in protection, so old iron armor would have been less sturdy but a similar weight. And a full suit of armor would have been too expensive to just let rust. I'm shaky on these points because I don't know much about very early full plate.
He changed his original statement from 'if you fell on your back in armor you would need 3 guys to help you up' to 'falling off a horse with the added armor weight could knock the wind out of you and make you unable to get up temporarily'. I think he also backtracked from his statement about armor weighing more than the knight, by qualifying it with people were smaller and 'a significant amount of their bodyweight' i.e. noticeably heavier than, say, the 90lb melee/joust armor mentioned in the links earlier.
This is sounds like he's trying to save face to me with a bunch of qualifications for his initial statements which were flat out wrong or very misleading about armor in general if one is being very generous with him
Anyway, I think I might be able to convince him if I could provide an example of a practical/low-tier/bargain bin/etc + very early iron jousting armor with weight and/or thickness measurements. |
He's possibly not dead wrong from his point of view, although physics might not be his field of expertise. Armour with less capable materials like mildest steel to iron or even fibres had to be much heavier for the same protection, so the leaner the purse, the heavier things could get. If you fall down with such stuff on a battlefield, well, battlefields are often very run over places that makes them muddy and this mud can suck the armour, so you really need help to get up.
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William P
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| Posted: Thu 03 May, 2012 7:04 pm Post subject: |
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| Kurt Scholz wrote: | | Cole B wrote: | Update for you guys. Had a short chat with him this morning before class. He did watch the video I sent yesterday (The MET one you all are probably familiar with) which is more than I was expecting actually.
I think he has somewhat moderated his position in his head, but didn't want to flat out admit he was wrong in his lecture. (Armor weighing more than a knight did, 2-3 people required to help someone up)
His points and where I disagree but didn't have time to debate
The MET video is reactionary against the Hollywood myths (needing a crane to get on horse, etc) but goes too far in the other direction, only using the highest tier armor that would be owned by Monarchs as examples when they aren't accurate as far as what the average or poor knight would have worn
A knight participating in jousts generally had a certain level of wealth and a support system under him, the idea of poor knights jousting in ultra-crappy heavy armor seems silly. The most expensive armor was probably that way due to artistry/stylization and not a -significant- function improvement.
Earlier plate armor was heavier (I said iron doesn't weight significantly more than steel) to which he responded that it was cast iron(?) so it had to be made thicker, and these early examples of armor generally don't survive because they rusted
The idea that they used cast iron doesn't sound right to me, but I could be wrong. And in general there is a certain level of mobility anyone wearing armor would require that they can't compromise further on in protection, so old iron armor would have been less sturdy but a similar weight. And a full suit of armor would have been too expensive to just let rust. I'm shaky on these points because I don't know much about very early full plate.
He changed his original statement from 'if you fell on your back in armor you would need 3 guys to help you up' to 'falling off a horse with the added armor weight could knock the wind out of you and make you unable to get up temporarily'. I think he also backtracked from his statement about armor weighing more than the knight, by qualifying it with people were smaller and 'a significant amount of their bodyweight' i.e. noticeably heavier than, say, the 90lb melee/joust armor mentioned in the links earlier.
This is sounds like he's trying to save face to me with a bunch of qualifications for his initial statements which were flat out wrong or very misleading about armor in general if one is being very generous with him
Anyway, I think I might be able to convince him if I could provide an example of a practical/low-tier/bargain bin/etc + very early iron jousting armor with weight and/or thickness measurements. |
He's possibly not dead wrong from his point of view, although physics might not be his field of expertise. Armour with less capable materials like mildest steel to iron or even fibres had to be much heavier for the same protection, so the leaner the purse, the heavier things could get. If you fall down with such stuff on a battlefield, well, battlefields are often very run over places that makes them muddy and this mud can suck the armour, so you really need help to get up. |
i heard that as well, mud sticks to metals compared to cloth (a doco on agincourt dipped a flat mld steel plate into a tank of thick mud, it came out weighing several times itsinitial weight due to a fairly large clumps of mud mud sticking to all areas of the metal plate , when that plate was covered in cloth , to replicate the mostly nonmetallic armour of the common longbowmen etc, it was soaked throgh but didnt have clumps of mud stcking to it when it was pulled out of the mud.
this might be due to the electrostatic effect mud has, since soil particles hae a natural electrochemical polarity on their sufrface, which attracts metal ions etc,
hypothetically the mus miht be partly employing this to stick to the metal
it might also be the fact that te water content of the mud and the smooth metal surface has a slight adhesive effect
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Randall Moffett
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| Posted: Fri 04 May, 2012 5:32 am Post subject: |
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We need to be careful about how big an impact the mud was in some cases, especially such as Agincourt. The primary people speaking about how bad the mud was were strangely on the same side and looking to blame just about everything and any one for the outcome. I am not saying it was not a factor BUT we need to be careful how big we let it get. One of Dr. Curry's big points in her new Agincourt books, one that really need be applied to get a good idea of this battle, is the blame culture that was spinning out of control in France after the battle.
Unlike the idea more captives were killed than combatants, which is unsupported by primary evidence at all.
RPM
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Glennan Carnie
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| Posted: Fri 04 May, 2012 6:01 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | i heard that as well, mud sticks to metals compared to cloth (a doco on agincourt dipped a flat mld steel plate into a tank of thick mud, it came out weighing several times itsinitial weight due to a fairly large clumps of mud mud sticking to all areas of the metal plate , when that plate was covered in cloth , to replicate the mostly nonmetallic armour of the common longbowmen etc, it was soaked throgh but didnt have clumps of mud stcking to it when it was pulled out of the mud.
this might be due to the electrostatic effect mud has, since soil particles hae a natural electrochemical polarity on their sufrface, which attracts metal ions etc,
hypothetically the mus miht be partly employing this to stick to the metal |
Actually, what I believe the documentary did was drag a bluff, rigid steel plate through a viscous medium (mud) and then compared that to a piece of wool dragged through the same mud. No surprise that the steel plate generated more drag than the (floppy) wool.
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Ryan S.
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| Posted: Fri 04 May, 2012 6:58 am Post subject: |
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| Tom King wrote: | | If you feel like trolling your professor, find a local reenactment group and see if you can borrow a kit from a guy of similar dimensions. Then wear it to class one day. |
That would be modern armor, and not really make a point. Your professor does have a point in that some modern reproductions aren't very authentic and that he read some where armor is heavy. Really, cited a few scholarly books is the best way to change his mind, and really he wouldn't be that good of a scholar if he based his history off of a students observations at an anachronistic fair. The thing to remember with these misconceptions is that just because someone publishes a correction, the misconception doesn't die. European Medieval scholars, aren't necessarily focused on armor, so they never read the texts about armor, and write papers based on the misconceptions, which in turn are read by the next generation.
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Kurt Scholz
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| Posted: Fri 04 May, 2012 12:05 pm Post subject: |
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| Glennan Carnie wrote: | | Quote: | i heard that as well, mud sticks to metals compared to cloth (a doco on agincourt dipped a flat mld steel plate into a tank of thick mud, it came out weighing several times itsinitial weight due to a fairly large clumps of mud mud sticking to all areas of the metal plate , when that plate was covered in cloth , to replicate the mostly nonmetallic armour of the common longbowmen etc, it was soaked throgh but didnt have clumps of mud stcking to it when it was pulled out of the mud.
this might be due to the electrostatic effect mud has, since soil particles hae a natural electrochemical polarity on their sufrface, which attracts metal ions etc,
hypothetically the mus miht be partly employing this to stick to the metal |
Actually, what I believe the documentary did was drag a bluff, rigid steel plate through a viscous medium (mud) and then compared that to a piece of wool dragged through the same mud. No surprise that the steel plate generated more drag than the (floppy) wool. |
Sorry, i'm neither convinced of this Agincourt thing. The French made up excuses for a society that was unable to win battles despite outnumbering and outspending the enemy.
I rather want to say that added weight through mud and water can change the total weight of an armament and this might lead to needing help if falling down. Mud and water aren't uncommon conditions in European warfare.
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Quinn W.
Location: Bellingham, WA Joined: 02 May 2009
Posts: 197
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| Posted: Fri 04 May, 2012 1:14 pm Post subject: |
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I think the best evidence you could present would be statistics from various museums if you can track them down. That's not an issue of interpretation or opinion, that's just straight up evidence of the exact weight of authentic, period armor.
I imagine if he is trying particularly hard to refute you he might say that most museum armor is the best of the best, reserved for kings and the like, but I'm sure you can find something in some museum somewhere that is representative of a more "average" quality harness.
Yes, we have books from reputed scholars, but he might argue that he is one himself. We can physically test via recreations, but he could argue they are not faithful to the originals. And we can use the basic logic and argue that if it were really that uselessly encumbering, nobody would have used it, let alone poured a huge chunk of their resources into acquiring it, but he could argue that such ideas are fine conjecture but cannot be counted as evidence since there is no tangible confirmation of this line of thought.
But by presenting a list of weights of surviving pieces, making sure the list isn't exclusively made up of armor owned by the ultra-elite, is, as far as I can see, a pretty sure-fire case.
As mentioned before, the Wallace Collection is one such instance in which the weights and dimensions of their pieces have been published on their website.
"Some say that the age of chivalry is past, that the spirit of romance is dead. The age of chivalry is never past, so long as there is a wrong left unredressed on earth"
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Dan Howard
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| Posted: Fri 04 May, 2012 3:11 pm Post subject: |
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Agreed with Quinn. Museum weights is the only valid evidence. This data needs to be collected in an easy to access location anyway. Would make a great project.
How hard is it for us to find the weight and dimensions (especially thickness) of a specific piece of armour? Sometimes weight is listed. Sometimes dimensions. But rarely both.
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Greg Bowen
Location: Indiana Joined: 04 May 2012
Posts: 8
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| Posted: Fri 04 May, 2012 11:13 pm Post subject: |
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| Glennan Carnie wrote: | | Quote: | i heard that as well, mud sticks to metals compared to cloth (a doco on agincourt dipped a flat mld steel plate into a tank of thick mud, it came out weighing several times itsinitial weight due to a fairly large clumps of mud mud sticking to all areas of the metal plate , when that plate was covered in cloth , to replicate the mostly nonmetallic armour of the common longbowmen etc, it was soaked throgh but didnt have clumps of mud stcking to it when it was pulled out of the mud.
this might be due to the electrostatic effect mud has, since soil particles hae a natural electrochemical polarity on their sufrface, which attracts metal ions etc,
hypothetically the mus miht be partly employing this to stick to the metal |
Actually, what I believe the documentary did was drag a bluff, rigid steel plate through a viscous medium (mud) and then compared that to a piece of wool dragged through the same mud. No surprise that the steel plate generated more drag than the (floppy) wool. |
For what it's worth, I believe this is the program in question: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uy7DT_FTms0. The relevant part is from 32:59 to 37:58.
According to the fellow running the test, the second go is indeed a metal plate with cloth wrapped around it, rather than just a piece of floppy cloth alone. The issue with the metal alone, though, wasn't the weight of mud clumps sticking it, but the suction that had to be broken before it came away.
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Glennan Carnie
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| Posted: Sat 05 May, 2012 1:36 am Post subject: |
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| Greg Bowen wrote: | | Glennan Carnie wrote: | | Quote: | i heard that as well, mud sticks to metals compared to cloth (a doco on agincourt dipped a flat mld steel plate into a tank of thick mud, it came out weighing several times itsinitial weight due to a fairly large clumps of mud mud sticking to all areas of the metal plate , when that plate was covered in cloth , to replicate the mostly nonmetallic armour of the common longbowmen etc, it was soaked throgh but didnt have clumps of mud stcking to it when it was pulled out of the mud.
this might be due to the electrostatic effect mud has, since soil particles hae a natural electrochemical polarity on their sufrface, which attracts metal ions etc,
hypothetically the mus miht be partly employing this to stick to the metal |
Actually, what I believe the documentary did was drag a bluff, rigid steel plate through a viscous medium (mud) and then compared that to a piece of wool dragged through the same mud. No surprise that the steel plate generated more drag than the (floppy) wool. |
For what it's worth, I believe this is the program in question: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uy7DT_FTms0. The relevant part is from 32:59 to 37:58.
According to the fellow running the test, the second go is indeed a metal plate with cloth wrapped around it, rather than just a piece of floppy cloth alone. The issue with the metal alone, though, wasn't the weight of mud clumps sticking it, but the suction that had to be broken before it came away. |
This is pretty dubious 'science' if you ask me. More like someone with a conclusion looking for 'scientific evidence' to back it up.
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Kurt Scholz
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| Posted: Sat 05 May, 2012 4:22 am Post subject: |
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| Dan Howard wrote: | Agreed with Quinn. Museum weights is the only valid evidence. This data needs to be collected in an easy to access location anyway. Would make a great project.
How hard is it for us to find the weight and dimensions (especially thickness) of a specific piece of armour? Sometimes weight is listed. Sometimes dimensions. But rarely both. |
There are several munitions grade armours preserved in old stores that were meant to supply simple soldiers. In German the term for these is "Zeughaus".
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Michael Curl
Location: Northern California, US Joined: 06 Jan 2008
Posts: 487
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| Posted: Sat 05 May, 2012 10:33 am Post subject: |
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The Graz armoury in styria has quite a few pieces of munition armor but I think they are all 16th and later.
E Pluribus Unum
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Michel Vander Linde
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| Posted: Fri 21 Sep, 2012 6:07 am Post subject: Re: Disagreement with Professor over weight of armor |
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| Cole B wrote: | Hey guys. My European history professor was doing his lecture and essentially said that a knight's armor weighed more than he did, and if he fell down he was pretty much useless and required people to help him up.
Of course this set the armor enthusiast in me twitching but I waited til the end of class to let him know that it was a myth, armor was actually very practical, I had seen people run, cartwheel, somersault in armor, as well as tapestries of fully armored men mounting horses on their own, etc.
He immediately disagreed and said that was modern armor I had seen, and old armor pre-alloys was extremely heavy, that he had researched it a lot and read old english accounts where men had to be helped up by multiple people. The next class was coming in so I didn't get much of a chance to present my arguments (armor that heavy is impractical and no one would sacrifice that much mobility, the gradual change from mail to full plate etc.)
Anyway, is there any truth to his claims or is he just very convinced about a myth? All I can think of is that maybe he was thinking of the heavier, purely for tournament jousting armor. |
He must be refering to, I forget which book exactly, a collage level book for British literature or medieval history where this is menchioned. However, if he did any research he would have found that the man in question was remarkably old for this time period around 50, and that he fell from a horse and later died from the injuries he sustained. The intresting part is how he procevied that the armor was hevy when no where in the story is it stated, further more when it did refer to weight it was about carring his armored body through the moors/swamps. When loosly translated it does state he died from the armor, but what it means is that his armor wasn't able to protect him from the fall. This story is menchioned in one of the following works Kay B. Sclocum's Medieval culture and history, Judith M. Bennett's Medieval Europe, or the 4th edition of the longman anthology British Literature volume A-B. I do not remember which book it is in. 
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M P Johnson
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| Posted: Fri 21 Sep, 2012 7:30 am Post subject: |
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I had this same issue with a history professor at the University of Georgia some years ago. At first she was resistant, but I was able to provide the written proof that contradicted her. Also, since I was an armourer and had a full harness of 14th Century armour, I was able to put on a fighting demo for the class that clearly showed how mobile one could be in a full harness.
Mike
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Dan Howard
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Clifford Rogers
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| Posted: Fri 21 Sep, 2012 2:50 pm Post subject: |
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You could mention to him the exercises undertaken by Marshal Boucicaut (though he was admittedly exceptional): he could do summersaults wearing his full armor except for the bascinet; and leap onto the back of a warhorse in full armor without putting his foot in the stirrup. Wearing a cotte d'acier, he would climb the underside of a great ladder resting against a wall, all the way to the top, without using his feet, just his two hands from rung to rung.
Source: _Le Liver des Fais du bon Messire Jehan le Maingre, dit Bouciquaut_, ed. Denis Lalande, 25-26, as summarized in a personal communication by Professor Clifford J. Rogers.
Clifford J. Rogers
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D. S. Smith
Location: Central CA Joined: 02 Oct 2011
Posts: 236
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| Posted: Wed 26 Sep, 2012 9:19 pm Post subject: |
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I was touring a castle (actually a winery, but cool none the less) recently, and the tourguide was pointing at a full plate suit of jousting armor. When someone asked him how the knight was supposed to see out of the very narrow slit in the visor, he said that seeing wasn't the goal. The knight in full plate armor was used essentially like a human cannonball, and launched into groups of enemy without really having to see or move around much. 
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