Making Pteruges (or at least trying to make Pteruges!)

[MartinWard]

What i am getting at is that Most modern centurions choose leather over material. I personally find leather pleasing to the eye. I am sure in the real roman world personal choice accounted a lot for what type of material was used for whatever as well as money as it does nowadays
Leather whilst a good rain cover still needs oiling, so canvas shield covers and tents are still practicable once they are waterproofed. as in all our reconstructions, finds play the vital part in our chosen field of history. As we have no finds of the material items we have discussed then our reproductions are hypothetical to say the least. we do not experience for real the conditions of real sharp pointy objects being used in combat, we can not therefore logically put forward one form of defence as better than another as the battle conditions for use dont exist. as a modern roman, all our hand to hand combat has to conform to safe hit areas on the body, and our weapons are blunted at point and along edges. as the groin area is avoided during combat for obvious reasons, the defensive properties of the pteruges against a sharp edge cannot be tested, well not in combat conditions anyway.
Anyone can set up a dummy clothed in any type of armour and hack away at it and say well the test results were like this or that, this does not reflect a person in armour moving about while you try to hit them. Until such a time as two persons decided they are stupid enough to have a go for real at each other, which i believe is still illegal in the UK. then we can not test our theories, as much as we would like to. Actually i think the romans had a better way to deal with criminals than we do now, perhaps we should give them a sword each and see what effect and damage they could do to each other, better than watching footy,