Glued Linen Armour- a simple test

[rocktupac]

My results were the complete opposite. Closely spaced quilted linen protects better than fish glue, casein glue, and modern pva. I tested broadhead arrows, bodkin arrows, a few different knives and a stiletto spike. I needed about half an inch of spacing between rows to get similar protection to the glue. If the rows of stitching were any closer then quilting provides better protection. If you cross-hatch the quilting, the level of protection reduces for some reason. If the layers of linen are rotated so that the weft and warp in each layer run in different directions then both the glued and quilted examples provide better protection. Glue also increased the weight more than quilting and there was no ventilation at all making it less comfortable to wear. There is no conceivable reason for using glue to make layered linen armour. Layered textiles have been used as armour for many centuries by many cultures and there are quite a few of them in various collections. Not a single one of them uses glue and the only time leather is used in the construction is as a protective or decorative layer on the outside. There is no evidence and no precedent for glued linen armour.

This is going to sound repetitive, but the results from the testing I have done along with Prof. Greg Aldrete over the past two or more years were completely opposite to everything you claim. To summarize: we found closely spaced quilting (or any type of quilting for that matter) proved inferior to laminating; we found that rotating the direction of the weft and warp made no difference, we even conducted tests on a patch where each layer was slightly more rotated than the previous so the warp and weft directions were even more extreme, but this too made no difference; we have no experience wearing a full piece of quilted armor (of the type IV variety, according to Jarva's typology), but a full piece of armor made by lamination is extremely comfortable to wear, and we have experience wearing the armor on a number of occasions for up to 8 hours at a time in a range of temperatures (including mid-summer's heat while performing various athletic demonstrations) with little irritation; we tested a total of 10 replica arrowheads of varying shapes and sizes, made from bronze and iron, using wood shafts and natural fletchings (everything was as accurate as we could), using bows of varying strength and from varying distances. The testing was quite exhaustive and in every case laminated linen performed extraordinarily well, especially when considering that our tests were performed in a sort of 'worst case scenario' (i.e. from close ranges and at a perpendicular angle).

I realize there is no explicit evidence for laminated linen armor thus far, and you have also made it clear that there are precedents for quilted cloth armor in other cultures, but as far as I know there is no mention that the Greeks or any other ancient Mediterranean peoples wore textile armor that was quilted. What is striking about the absence of quilted armor references for the Archaic and Classical periods is that there appears over two dozen literary examples of soldiers wearing armor made of linen and none of them even hint at the armor being quilted or stitched or sewn, etc. (I am also aware that it does not refer to the armor as laminated or glued, etc. as well) My point is that there was a type of armor made of linen and nothing we have suggests it was one or the other.

For our tests we have also found every artistic representation of type IV armor found in the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum (nearly 1,000 examples so far). Many have used what looks to be a kind of quilted armor on the vases as evidence for its existence, but when the entire body of vase paintings from the CVA is examined the number of the so-called 'quilted armor' examples is a tiny fraction of the smooth-looking, 'not-quilted' types. Though this is admittedly a featherweight argument, it does add another slight bit of weight for the argument against quilting.