Scale Thorax Research

[John Conyard]

Thank you. But I must stress this isn’t really my field.

But Roman armour is. James (2004) writes that Robinson had probably never seen the thigh guards from Dura. Neither have I. James states they do not have the texture of appearance of rawhide. Blair (1958) calls them cuir boulli, or hardened leather. My pair are made from tanned leather hardened in boiling wax.

Reconstructors like hard evidence, just like lawyers. There does seem so much evidence for the use of hardened and laminated tanned leather, I do wonder why we look to rawhide or tawed leather as alternatives for shield or armour construction.

The tube and yoke has plain lines and does not look moulded. The shape could be produced by lamination. However the edges of laminated leather would be susceptible to damp, and would need edging. In my opinion this edging can be seen on tube and yoke armours.

Anyway, now I’m off to wear my tube and yoke all day. The colouring is in part based on Ariston’s.

[Kineas]

I need to come back on this, John.

"Tawed" is an English term and has no meaning to me--I picked it up from UK leather manufacturers, and the way they use it, it is NOT repeat NOT rawhide in any way. I'm not going to get involved between you and they--English is difficult enough for North Americans!

However, when I say "Tawed" I mean (I say again) what I used to call "alum buff" which is a heavy, pale cream or near white cowhide that is most assuredly tanned. This leather is finished with Alum and was used byt he British Army from about 1710 to today for those niffty white cross belts. As I've said on other threads, it wears like iron, looks great, and acts (to me) like the material in the T+Y. It is not rawhide. If that leather is not "tawed" then blame my supplier and this list, which taught me the term...in North America, we call that leather "buff" or "alum buff."

I don't entirely agree with your assertions qua rawhide as a shield covering, as you know from other posts--but I'd never make armor from rawhide. Yech! A little sweat and you'd have a truly remarkable smell.

The "white" portions of my scale armor are alum buff--fully tanned, and already endured 20 hours of fighting and two rain storms.

Sorry if this sounds combatative--far from it, I loved your post, but I'm in haste. And my computer is down!

[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?

[Matt Lukes]

Oh boy, haven't there been enough threads discussing all that? Please don't digress and totally change Christian's thread guys...

[Matt Lukes]

Just watching Troy, I noticed something interesting- some of the Myrmidones' armor has woven straps with rivets that surpsrisingly makes sense as an interpretation of the crosshatched design on Patrokos' armor on the plate:

[Dan Howard]

Just watching Troy, I noticed something interesting- some of the Myrmidones' armor has woven straps with rivets that surpsrisingly makes sense as an interpretation of the crosshatched design on Patrokos' armor on the plate:

Makes sense in that context since, in that movie, armour provided absolutely no protection against spear or arrow Functional armour would need to be constructed differently.

[Matt Lukes]

Obviously the huge gaps in the costum wouldn't be appropriate LOL Patroklos' weave is rather fine and if one follows the previously-suggested idea that the upper chest was considered to require less protection, perhaps even the minimal protection woven leather or whatever it is provides was considered sufficient.

[Lýsandros]

That's why Patroklos is wounded after all

[John Conyard]

Films....... do you think they will catch on? :roll:

Now let us get back to leather and Greek armour construction.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Just one question about rawhide if I may. When you oil it, does it not go soft as well?
I have no experience with it so am curious.

[Kineas]

Hmmm.

Let's not confuse rawhide (that stuff that I just covered a Boeotia with) with raw hide -- an untanned hide with no finishing work done.

If I put rawhide over a shield face, it hardens like rock. When I say "like rock" i mean "like rock." It shrinks about 10% of it's area, too--which has some interesting side effects. A whole cow is quite thick. I don't think you could punch a spear or sword through it. An axe, perhaps. In spring, I'll do tests so we can stop speculating. But it is REALLY DIFFERENT from tanned hide.

I can paint it. I can do all kinds of things to it. It is light-much lighter than tanned hide.

If you fill it with oil--well, first, you'd have to work oil into it. I hve put oil coats on rawhide. I once tried putting a linseed oil finish on. It has all the viscosity of plastic... until you get it really wet, and by really wet, I mean immersion for about 4 hours.

Not meaning to get John going, but there a really, really good armorer in Germany (at H Replikat) who seems to believe in covering shields in rawhide for Romans. His look exquisite. Anyway, I think there's room for experiment and discussion.

[Matt Lukes]

Sorry, I'm confused by what you wrote there Christian- rawide is raw hide- skin that's had the hair and fat removed but just dried and not tanned or otherwise preserved. What two different things are you referring to?

And Ratsdorf is certainly not the first nor the only person doing rawhide parchment on shields- I do that too The well-known intact Dura Europos semicylindrical scutum is covered with thin parchment (rawhide), and even Polybius mentions Roman shields being covered with calfskin- although he doesn't say rawhide or leather, but leather is less-likely. The parchment on the scutum is very thin- on the order of 0.5mm- which testing myself, I've found isn't terribly useful structurally-speaking.

[John Conyard]

Yes Byron, if you oil rawhide, for example to stop water penetration, it will go softer.

I am tempted to re-iterate some definitions of “leather”, and perhaps more importantly their historical use. But I will limit myself. Parchment can generally be taken as meaning thin skin without hair, wetted, limed and stretched over a frame. In the classical period rotted vegetable matter may have been used instead of lime. It’s use to face shields suggests it was to help limit moisture penetration, and perhaps to protect the painted decoration. Not to greatly aid structural stability.

On a completely different note, I recently read an admonishment to Samurai to wear badger skin underwear to reduce lice infestation. Now that is something I would like to understand.