Scale Thorax Research

[John Conyard]

Sorry to hear about your computer. My world ends when mine goes down. I’m sorry to hear you don’t use English over there either

We are perhaps all guilty of not defining what we mean, and I mentioned rawhide in my last post without explaining what it is. So back to defining my terms.

Rawhide is a hide or skin that has not been tanned, and is generally lighter in colour than leather which has been vegetable tanned. The fur, meat and fat are removed and the rawhide dried over a frame. It goes hard and almost translucent. It can be wetted, moulded, and dried to the desired shape. It can be left hard or “worked” by stretching, bending and by chewing. Like all leather it can be oiled or treated with fat to provide a degree of waterproofing.

I have some experience of using rawhide. My coracle was made using a form of rawhide, and it was used to cover saddletrees because of its resistance to abrasion. However after the American Civil War the rawhide on McCellan saddles was covered in vegetable tanned leather to improve it’s resistance to water. In history both tawed leather and rawhide were seen as susceptible to dampness, including sweat. Sweat would leach the alum out of tawed leather, and make rawhide soft.

To quote my earlier post, “I’m aware of one questionable reference to shavings of rawhide being used to make moulded armour, and one relatively modern African shield perhaps with a long tradition, using possibly laminated rawhide”. And you have mentioned that the indigenous peoples of North American and some parts of Africa use shields made of rawhide. Certainly the rawhide could be dried over the frame of a shield, or coracle , shrinking and hardening as it did so. But I would want several layers of such rawhide between my opponent and me.

I suspect your armour is made from vegetable tanned leather, whitened using alum. This as I have already said seems a very likely possibility for classical armour. Although laminating it would make it thicker and partially hardening could help. But it is not alum or mineral tawed leather.

Buff leather is a term UK re-enactors love, due to it’s connotations with 17th century buff coats of the English Civil Wars. We use it too readily. I recommend Professor Procter, Principals of Leather Manufacture, 1922.

We can simply define buff leather as oil tanned leather, producing a buff coloured leather. The wet skin is oiled or greased, stretched and kneaded until moisture is lost and fat is absorbed. This is a very old process dating back to the first leather preparations. The brain tanning of the USA is linked to this, where brains and smoke were used the same way. Graham Sumner in “Roman Military Dress” gives us the accepted view that there is no Roman evidence for oil tanning, yet it is perhaps the oldest method of leather preparation. In 17th century Europe marine oils were used, and some of the first machines used in tanning were made to help pummel the oil into the hide. The hides were first soaked, often using lime, dried using sawdust and oatmeal, then oiled. Lime helps the quality of the oiled leather. The ancients may have used wood ash. The shales of North Yorkshire, just up the road from me, produced alum by large-scale chemical processing from the early 17th century. This is the origin of your white buff leather military belts. The wood ash, alum and lime opened up the fibres of the leather making it easier to oil. Back in classical times I suspect small skins could be oiled successfully without the use of alum or lime. But not large thick skins. I think there is a reference in Homer's Iliad where he compares the struggles between Greece and Troy to that of a man trying to stretch a huge cowhide soaked in lard. Evidence of liming dating back to Anglo Saxon times suggests that medieval tanners were using liming to remove hair and open up the fibre structure and would have used this in their manufacture of oil tan buff leather.

So military buff leather can be seen as thick leather, usually between 3 to 5mm, which requires a heavy cattle hide. First of all the hide is washed and then treated with a liming solution which burns off the hair and swells up the hide. This allows the hide to more readily soak up the oils. By the 18th century a band knife splitting machine was used to split the hide in uniform thickness. Then the strongly alkaline lime residue was removed from the hide using acid salts. Before the oiling a samming machine like a mangle removed excess moisture. Then cod oil was used for the tanning, and beef tallow as a lubricant.

As to when buff leather was made in Europe, thick enough to act as armour is a tricky one. The reference from Homer suggests perhaps not successfully in his period. Buff armours made using lime could be used at least from the Anglo Saxon period. Buff armours made using alum could be made industrially from the 17th century.

So for leather armour we can chose from vegetable tanned leather, tawed or mineral “tanned” leather, rawhide and oil tanned buff leather using alum or lime in the tanning process.

There seems so much evidence for the use of vegetable tanned leather, so little for tawed leather or rawhide, and processing issues around oiled leather. Take your pick. Perhaps we need a vote?