Rolling Roman Iron for Segmentata Plates

[Matt Lukes]

No, they'd have to be iron or steel- but the thing is that there would have only had to have been a fairly small number relatively and thus it's not odd that we have never found any as they could simply have decayed. Given that we've never found a muscled cuirass, and have only a rather small number of helmets, swords, mail and plate armors- all of which had to exist in the hundreds of thousands overall, it doesn't really surprise me.

As I said, they need only have been small since the widest plate of any segmentata found is only about 9.5cm (3 3/4")- that means a roller just a bit longer and maybe 5cm (2") in diameter? It'd have projections at either end to fit into a frame and maybe some sort of attachment points for a crank arm- one of the two rollers would anyay.

Here are a selection of rollers for a modern desktop mill:



And here's a mill itself- the mechanism at the top is for adjusting the separation of the rollers so isn't a necessary part of the machine- it really only needs the frame to hold the rollers, a couple of gears and the crank arm.