Scale Armor & Accuracy

[Dan Howard]

I disagree. I would argue that the evidence on originals is exactly the opposite. Each scale has different shapes and cuts. In fact many of them have one side curved more than the other, consistent with a right handed person cutting the metal with shears, over cutting the turn.(Try cutting an un-traced circle/half circle with a pair of scissors and see how one has a tenancy to cut the right turn too sharply compared to the left side)

Sim and Kaminksy used the Carlisle squamata as a case study and seem to think that the scales on this one were cut with a chisel. The scales were likely cut from a mechanically-produced strip of iron rather than a sheet.

Even when ferrous ties are used the metal used to fasten the plates is not the same as the metal from which the scales were made so it couldn't have been cut from the same plate. Given what we are starting to lean abot Roman metal fabrication it would make sense for every individual component to be mass-produced in an operation independent from each other. One workshop mass-produced wire. Another produced iron plate, another produced strips of iron, another made copper-alloy plate, another made hinges, etc. The scales likely came from one source, the backing from another, and the ties from a third source.