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Phobophilia posted:Is it a case of a javelin simply lacking the kinetic energy of an arrow, which you can build up using elastic energy? There were 2 basic types of javelins in use by these guys, a larger and heavier "traditional" javelin we'd all recognise and a smaller lighter "dart" type javelin. They usually both get called darts in the sources.  This is the larger type of javelin. You can clearly see his finger sitting in the leather loop. This type is usually more associated with native cavalry, but there were obviously no hard and fast rules. The guy pictured here is Captain Thomas Lee (the picture is from 1594), an English captain with long experience fighting in Ireland. He thoroughly "went native". This is the equipment of a wealthy buannacht, an Irish professional mercenary. The main tactic of guys like this is your classic proto-Highland charge against a unprepared/weakened enemy, preferably a block of wavering pikemen. Ironically, it was guys like this following hot on the heels of the English cavalry at the Battle of Kinsale that helped rout O'Neill's unformed tercio.  And this is the smaller "dart" type. You can clearly see his attendant in the background holding a bunch more of them. This picture is from 1690, long after these weapons had fallen out of use, but it's representation of the darts is considered accurate. Yes that is samurai armour, no the Irish were not wearing it. You are correct of course, the javelins really don't have the power of a bow and are therefore are much less deadly. Pila these things ain't. However, the common Irish guy on the battlefield is shockingly unarmoured, relying on terrain and manoeuvre for his protection. English troops commonly ditched their breastplates the first chance they got once in Ireland too. Guys like Captain Lee adopted Irish tactics with great gusto. A bow would be totally superior I have no doubt, but these guys didn't come from an archery culture and a javelin thrown at close range on the charge'll do the job fine. Bows appear amongst Irish forces more and more frequently throughout the medieval period, they appear to be more common in the south seemingly due to the Norman influence while they appear in Ulster primarily in the hands of Scottish mercenaries.
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Nov 27, 2014 12:18
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Why no trousers in the first picture? Is it because they would get wet and dirty in marshland and so people preferred to go without?
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Nov 27, 2014 14:27
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It all seems to be a matter of personal preference really, they'd wear tight fitting trews if it was cold. The guy in the second picture is wearing a very fancy brat (great cloak), the accounts mention them "casting off their brats" just before a charge. The brat could also be wrapped around the arm to form a makeshift shield.
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Nov 27, 2014 14:46
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Kopijeger posted:Why no trousers in the first picture? Is it because they would get wet and dirty in marshland and so people preferred to go without? What kind of effeminate barbarians do you think the Irish were?
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Nov 27, 2014 14:50
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Comstar posted:Any one has any suggestions for books about famous vendetta/blood feud's? Most of the stories on the internet I find only have detailed information about ones in the US post 1850, Do you want primary or secondary sources? Njál's Saga is a primary source that immediately comes to mind and is readily available in translation. For that matter, the Icelandic sagas are full of feuds.
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Nov 27, 2014 20:29
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I kind of have to vent about the horrible Richard III stories going around right now about how he shares no paternal DNA with the any of the Lancaster or Tudor branch of the family. This is despite the fact that didn't check either of the better Plantagenet line descendants but instead checked the Duke of Beaufort (I believe the Earl of Hastings would be the best track from Edward III)
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Dec 3, 2014 18:24
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Do keep in mind that the sagas are at best historical fiction and at worst complete fiction. The sagas are written 200-300 years after the events they depict took place. Most of the sagas take place in the late 10th or early 11th centuries but almost all of them were written in the 13th century except for a few in the 14th. So it's Christians living in a unstable Iceland, that might well be in the middle of a civil war, writing about pagans living in a recently settled but fairly stable and peaceful(aside from the odd feud). It is likely that many of the sagas are based on tales about real people and real events that were passed down verbally but even the ones that have changed the least are bound to have been embellished at least a bit through centuries of being told around the fire. But who knows, maybe people in the 10th century really were jumping their height in full armor and saying clever one liners in the heat of battle. FreudianSlippers fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Dec 5, 2014 |
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Dec 5, 2014 00:18
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Bumping this thread to say I'm finally taking fencing classes. We're doing Giganti.
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Jan 16, 2015 10:06
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That sounds fun as hell.
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Jan 16, 2015 18:09
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HEY GAL posted:Bumping this thread to say I'm finally taking fencing classes. We're doing Giganti. Sweet.
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Jan 16, 2015 18:45
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Fencing dude: *adjusts my hips a finger's breadth to the left* "OK, feel the difference? This is important." Me: what
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Jan 16, 2015 19:35
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I don't do any kind of hema but from general martial arts experience any instructor that gets caught up in really minor things like being in a slightly wrong stance is a bad sign.
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Jan 16, 2015 19:47
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Rabhadh posted:I don't do any kind of hema but from general martial arts experience any instructor that gets caught up in really minor things like being in a slightly wrong stance is a bad sign.
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Jan 16, 2015 19:48
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You're dangerous now, eh? Bowmaking? Bowmaking  Shaping was more difficult than expected  Coated with thin glue and ready for the sinew  Weighting the first layer of sinew  Soaking the sinew in water  Hideglue added to the fishglue  Melted and almost ready  Taking the sinew out of the water and combing  Then some poo poo happened, but it turned out ok I think. Backstrap is so long that it's almost impossible to control when slippery, that's why the Koreans let the bundle gel on the board. The form of this type of bow doesn't lend itself to backstrap, unlike the korean bow. Anyway, it's already done and I learned something.  Pulled into reflex  5 days later I cleaned it up. Looked good then, not like on the pics. The next sinew layer was applied today and there's more reflex  Tomorrow the sinew will the made even with a sponge and a wooden dowel. In 2 weeks, I'll remove the string and the bow will have gained even more reflex and stay in this shape for seasoning for the next 6 months or so. Maybe less. Eventually the core will be cleaned up and carefully sanded for a better appearance. There's this ugly lump of sinew that I left on the grip, so that I don't have to lay it in the fades, which would make the shape uneven. Doesn't matter, it's going to be sanded away. What strikes me is, that the differences in the core thickness that I measured while shaping is already visible. It's like 0,2-0,3mm I'm wondering how strong this bow will turn out. It's entirely possible that it will turn out too strong for me to shoot. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Jan 16, 2015 |
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Jan 16, 2015 19:50
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Speaking of recurve bows, something I've observed recently is that all the bows pictured in the 9th century Utrecht Psalter are recurves, as is this bow from an early 12th century relief at the church of St. Zeno in Verona: https://www.flickr.com/photos/roelipilami/2214835854/in/set-72157602617454669 Makes me wonder if composite bowmaking proliferated into Europe or if the bows were just that shape or what. Psalter images, for reference:    
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Jan 16, 2015 20:14
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JaucheCharly posted:You're dangerous now, eh? All your posts on bowmaking and the bow bending in the process really empathize how much skill and technique goes into making these. Its a wonder that people managed to produce these types of bows in large enough quantities for use in warfare.
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Jan 16, 2015 20:18
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JaucheCharly posted:Bowmaking Some tiny part of me wants you to come back in six months when the bow is finished and identify the picture where things went irrevocably wrong. 
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Jan 16, 2015 20:23
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HEY GAL posted:Fencing dude: *adjusts my hips a finger's breadth to the left* "OK, feel the difference? This is important." I wish I could do Rapier fencing around here. From my own sport fencing experience, hip rotation makes a huge difference in not only footwork but all the way down to point placement. I've seen a lot of beginners hugely improve and suddenly hit on target just by adjusting their hips. I can imagine it's even more important in non sport fencing, where you are trying to hurt your opponent in theory but keep them alive in practice.
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Jan 16, 2015 20:25
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Recurve bow images Phone posting here, but didn't we have a discussion about the 16th century depictions of Scottish and Irish bows where they were all shown as recurves but all other evidence says they were longbows? Could be a similar story
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Jan 16, 2015 20:40
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HEY GAL posted:Fencing dude: *adjusts my hips a finger's breadth to the left* "OK, feel the difference? This is important." Rabhadh posted:I don't do any kind of hema but from general martial arts experience any instructor that gets caught up in really minor things like being in a slightly wrong stance is a bad sign. Yup. That stuff /is/ important, but it's also generally stuff you work towards later on. Micro-corrections in the beginning of your training can only confuse you, and it's when you have a baseline understanding of the concepts that you should start tweaking those minutiae. Learn to lunge correctly first, then learn to make that lunge more and more perfect.
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Jan 16, 2015 20:47
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I have seen the psalter pics a few weeks ago, I think either Mike Loades posted it on his FB page, or some dude in a group. It's the shortness that usually gives a composite bow away. Recurves not so much, there's also medieval longbows that have light recurves. The thing about shortness is, that you can't make such short reflexed bows solely out of wood, there is no wood that could take the stress. Sinew backed would also be possible, although only up to a certain weight of maybe 80# or so and with less reflex, but I don't have experience with that and can only tell what I heard from other people. That would also yield a bow with short drawlenght and worse energy storage. When we talked about irish or scottish bows back then, op said that they were said to be relatively short bows made of elm. I don't know what to make of it. The real problem with composite bows is to find proper horn. Where would that be possible in Ireland or Scottland? There's only a few animals that can provide. Water buffalo or hungarian grey cattle for example. Goat or sheep horn also is possible, but it's incredible hard to saw up, due to the way it is curled up. The horn needs to be untwisted and run exactly in a straight line. Violating the grain has similar effects as you'd expect from wood. It's also possible that the horn reaches barely over the bending section as in old korean warbows. These people seem to have had a similar problem of finding horn.  Since you said Verona, there's a later period in Italy, where composite bows were somewhat popular. They're sometimes depicted in renaissance paintings  Some of them are even on display  One of the Medicis was quite fond of them and a few bows of his and archery tackle remains in a museum, although I'd have to look up which one it is. The Museo Stibbert in Florence is another place that holds such items. Anyway, back to the psalter. The sharp bend midlimb is something that only a composite bow can survive, and these also seem to be quite short. If you look at the area around the grip, it also apears that these bows were reflexed there. The picture below is a 12th century illustration of the Mongols laying siege to Baghdad. Note the draw to the chest and the size of the bow relative to the size of the shooter.  I'm not sure if it fits. A very short bow also needs to be shot with a thumbring. Due to the angle that the string has a full draw, it will crush your fingers if you shoot with mediterran release. Some people call this fingerpinch, it's quite uncomfortable. Maybe these bows were shot with 2 fingers or some kind of other shooting aid. I don't see a thumbdraw in the pics of the psalter. There's another notable thing though. At this time, somebody in the steppe came up with V-spliced siyahs, which means that stabilizing boneplates like these below from a Magyar grave became obsolete. Plates like these were found in their graves from the 8-13th century. Nobody is quite sure who invented splicing it that way, but the Cagaan Chaad bow has V-splices, while others like the Zargalant bow don't (this one is a bit older, lighter and a less radical design that features no boneplates).  These plates were used for a long time, parthian bows had them, hun bows, etc. There's even a very interesting find from a roman fort in Scottland (?) that has some of the wooden part of the siyah left in it, with the plates still attached.  So, ruling out that people here in Europe invented the V-splice at about the same time as the people in the steppe did, one could assume that an earlier type with boneplates would have been used. That would mean that these boneplates would have been found or will be found. Maybe the psalter depicts hungarians or cumans? Weren't cumans present at the battle at Dürnkrut? They're a turkic people that fled the mongols. It's possible that they bought the technology with them and sought employment as mercenaries. LordSaturn posted:Some tiny part of me wants you to come back in six months when the bow is finished and identify the picture where things went irrevocably wrong. It's entirely possible that this fails. Until now, I have lost many cores, one at each bigger workstep. The last one was of exquisite quality and failed at the wood/horn glue-up due to mismatched "matching" grooves (which weren't present in old bows). I don't know for sure if it has failed, but I won't take the risk of wasting materials and time on something that might knock my teeth or eyes out. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 11:56 on Jan 17, 2015 |
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Jan 16, 2015 21:49
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HEY GAL posted:"Both hands" + ["with"] + [noun ending]. It's another word for Zweihaender. Terms like "Satisfaktionsfähig" are also a bit old fashioned, I dont think you even hear them spoken unless you are talking with pretty old people and/or historians.
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Jan 16, 2015 22:02
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Verisimilidude posted:Yup. That stuff /is/ important, but it's also generally stuff you work towards later on. Micro-corrections in the beginning of your training can only confuse you, and it's when you have a baseline understanding of the concepts that you should start tweaking those minutiae. JaucheCharly posted:You're dangerous now, eh?
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Jan 16, 2015 22:51
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HEY GAL posted:pike was the first martial art I ever learned This is awesome. I'm not taking the piss, I really do think it's awesome.
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Jan 17, 2015 01:05
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Rabhadh posted:This is awesome. I'm not taking the piss, I really do think it's awesome. And the mere fact of holding one of the things is an affront to your body on a basic level, you'll spend the first day just getting over the feeling of betrayal HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 02:58 on Jan 17, 2015 |
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Jan 17, 2015 02:56
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Since this thread came back abruptly, I thought I would bring something up relating to the last post I made here, about the Japanese kanabo and two-handed club/mace weapons generally. Since then I've read up a little bit on the Maciejowski Bible, which is a famous primary source for medieval clothing and accoutrements--including arms and armor. It's illuminated with detailed illustrations, and since the convention in art up through the early modern period was to pretend that everybody in history was analogous to the artist's contemporaries, the illustrations tell us a lot. When the Old Testament talks about Israelites smiting the bad guys, we wind up with illustrations of what Polish guys in the mid-13th century would be wearing and carrying. Significantly, the illustrations appear to depict weapons that are not discussed in martial treatises, perhaps because they were in use for military purposes but not for single combat and not by people who read martial treatises. One of the failings of the fechtbuch is that by it's nature it must be directed towards people who both fought and could read, meaning the military aristocracy. In practice a lot of fighting was done by professional but illiterate soldiers, who couldn't afford books nor learning, and perhaps not the weapons described. The Maciejowski Bible, at least, depicts a few arms that are not known from fechtbucher. This is one that frequently appears:  Here we have a long club-type weapon with studs or spikes driven into the business end. In illustrations where it is being actively wielded, it's shown used with both hands. It would seem directly analogous to the kanabo, and even has basically the same design. Another example would be the "bar mace," which amounts to a steel bar with an x-shaped cross-section and a grip on one end. It has been observed in art, and there are even some surviving specimens, including one described by Oakeshott. Some were of ordinary one-handed mace length (24" or so), but they might be as long as a meter or slightly more in length, and heavy enough to require two-handed use. There is also the Godendag, which is a polearm of somewhat disputed design. A commonly accepted version would have it as a long club with a steel spike projecting from the top, and maybe spikes projecting out perpendicular from the business end. In the present day it doesn't appear that anybody is 100% on what it should look like, because descriptions and illustrations are not clear. This weapon was possibly related to the morningstar or holy water sprinkler, which was a spiked mace head often mounted on a 4-6' shaft, plenty long enough to be a two-handed weapon or even a polearm.
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Jan 17, 2015 06:53
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nothing to seehere posted:All your posts on bowmaking and the bow bending in the process really empathize how much skill and technique goes into making these. Its a wonder that people managed to produce these types of bows in large enough quantities for use in warfare. I have only little woodworking or bowyer experience and picked most of it up on the go. A person growing up on a farm who has to fix stuff around the house or make tools himself would have no problem with the skillset needed. Glueing is another story, but I've seen people working way more crudely than me and still make a working bow. These are all standard skills, safe for the geometry that you need. The time you really spend working on a bow like this is between 1-2 weeks, the rest is drying time. A professional workshop who has to start up needs alot of capital before he can begin to sell the bows. E.g. you need to pay for all the materials and tools and then make it through the first year before you see any money coming in. So that makes some kind of state run system necessary, or some kind of financier or sponsor. The ottomans had relatively large armies at that time and the bow was one of the main weapon until after the battle of Lepanto.
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Jan 17, 2015 12:10
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Man, the bow posts are such a joy to read.  Seriously, I had no idea it was such a complex process.
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Jan 17, 2015 12:17
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my dad posted:Man, the bow posts are such a joy to read. Agreed. I love reading about crafts. I wish we could get some smiths here too.
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Jan 17, 2015 12:22
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Hogge Wild posted:Agreed. I love reading about crafts. I wish we could get some smiths here too. I'm a smith, I just don't make weapons really.
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Jan 17, 2015 17:05
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You could become a more likeable person by starting to make arrowheads. Tanged ones preferrably. e: Like this dude. http://belza.iq.pl/index_eng.html Power Khan fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Jan 17, 2015 |
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Jan 17, 2015 17:25
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JaucheCharly posted:You could become a more likeable person by starting to make arrowheads. Tanged ones preferrably. "let me spend lots of time and energy making some fiddly crap that someone is just going to throw away" yeah that sounds great.
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Jan 17, 2015 18:00
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"Shoot at a rubber pig or a velociraptor and probably lose it in the botany"
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Jan 17, 2015 18:25
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JaucheCharly posted:
The Norman kings of Sicily kept retinues of "Saracen" archers, so I'm not that surprised to see recurves in Italy, but then again Verona is in Northern Italy, and in the 1130s was more involved with German wars than the Crusades or whatever. quote:Anyway, back to the psalter. The sharp bend midlimb is something that only a composite bow can survive, and these also seem to be quite short. If you look at the area around the grip, it also apears that these bows were reflexed there. The picture below is a 12th century illustration of the Mongols laying siege to Baghdad. Note the draw to the chest and the size of the bow relative to the size of the shooter. The Mongols didn't reach Baghdad until the 13th century. quote:I'm not sure if it fits. A very short bow also needs to be shot with a thumbring. Due to the angle that the string has a full draw, it will crush your fingers if you shoot with mediterran release. Some people call this fingerpinch, it's quite uncomfortable. Maybe these bows were shot with 2 fingers or some kind of other shooting aid. I don't see a thumbdraw in the pics of the psalter. The hands aren't detailed enough to show a thumb draw so I think you're inferring too much. quote:There's another notable thing though. At this time, somebody in the steppe came up with V-spliced siyahs, which means that stabilizing boneplates like these below from a Magyar grave became obsolete. Plates like these were found in their graves from the 8-13th century. Nobody is quite sure who invented splicing it that way, but the Cagaan Chaad bow has V-splices, while others like the Zargalant bow don't (this one is a bit older, lighter and a less radical design that features no boneplates). You seem to have a confused chronology. The psalter is 9th century, and the Cumans didn't even reach the Ukrainian steppe until the 11th. Dürnkrut is even later. These bows might have been a technological borrowing from the Magyars, who fought the Carolingians at around this time, but I do not think it is Magyars being depicted. The bows are also being used by the good guys in the drawings. I can't find it now but there's even, as I recall, a drawing of Christ giving a recurve bow to the subject of the Psalm. So these were clearly (in the illuminator's mind) Christian weapons.
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Jan 17, 2015 20:13
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:I'm a smith, I just don't make weapons really. Why not? Is there no market for it or you just don't wanna.
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Jan 17, 2015 20:51
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wdrwskillson#1908 btw
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Jan 17, 2015 21:05
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JaucheCharly posted:You could become a more likeable person by starting to make Speaking of making this stuff, look what I found. http://revival.us/polearmrubbertopandbottomspike.aspx Now all I have to do is find the money for a lot of these, find the money for 18' long ash shafts, find a place to train, and start raising my own company. Anyone wanna roadtrip to the wars with me? HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Jan 17, 2015 |
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Jan 17, 2015 23:16
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doverhog posted:Why not? Is there no market for it or you just don't wanna. There's a lot of reasons. I'm a hobbyist smith, and I feel that I can express my creativity better through other kinds of pieces. Additionally, I wouldn't get much use out of them, and when I make something I like to have some use for it, otherwise it can feel like I'm wasting my time. The biggest issues, however, are: 1) I don't know how to make most weapons with anything resembling historical techniques (you'd be surprised how much forge welding goes into a halberd head) and I don't have the time to learn ATM, and 2) I don't have access to a shop suited to handling pieces larger than a big dagger or spearhead. Swords are plainly out of the question, but so are some of the larger polearms. 3) I like working with scrap because it's free, but the type of steel I'd need for serious weapon making is not, and i don't have space for it really I am planning to make a nice dagger or two in time, but not for Hegel. 
Rodrigo Diaz fucked around with this message at 18:20 on Jan 18, 2015 |
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Jan 18, 2015 07:46
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JaucheCharly posted:I have only little woodworking or bowyer experience and picked most of it up on the go. A person growing up on a farm who has to fix stuff around the house or make tools himself would have no problem with the skillset needed. Glueing is another story, but I've seen people working way more crudely than me and still make a working bow. These are all standard skills, safe for the geometry that you need. It's also probably worth noting that the average person today who decides to make a bow probably makes a few for their own amusement. The dudes and dudettes who did that back in the day did that for a living, so they had a lot of experience whenever King Henry's agent showed up to ask "hey can you do like 500 bows for next week?"
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Jan 18, 2015 11:47
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Yup, I overread the age of the psalter and just saw 12th century, so I gave you stuff that roughly fits. I meant this pic when I spoke about the way of shooting It doesn't look like the handposition that's charactersistic to drawing with the thumb as the 4 fingers are visible. The bows depicted are short, so it's not possible or highly uncomfortable to shoot them with mediterranean draw. Something about the illustration is wrong. I gave you the siege of Baghdad pic, because it caputres some interesting details: bows that have roughly the same size as in the psalter in relation to the people, anchor point at the chest and the thumbdraw is clearly visible (imo not visible in the psalter). These features can also be found on sassanid plates (that show a special variation of the thumbdraw called "sassanid draw" that involved a glove), hunnish bone carvings or the Yuan dynasty painting of Kubilai Khan hunting to Shah Tahmasp's Shahname that I posted some time ago. Now, that's a rather large frame of time and places that are pretty far apart, but these things are similar. Sounds unlikely? Another example for a very distinct item that traveled all the way was a special kind of quiver that stores the arrows upside down that was found in cave burials in Mongolia from the 8-13th century and can be seen in the siege pic that I posted, to Tang-Dynasty reliefs and paintings...   ...to this mid 13th century painting of St. Serge in the St.Catherine monastery, Sinai  to burial sites in Hungary. If it's the 9th century that we're talking about, composite bows will have bone plates that would be found somewhere.
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Jan 18, 2015 11:52
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