I had SO much fun filming this one Tod. I think that the results are probably going to be quite shocking to a lot of people. They surprised me. I want to stab more stuff now ;-)
@@Hedgehobbit I suspect that it wouldn't be *as good as* the rondel, but a gladius appears to be a stabby stabby weapon more than a slashy slashy one. So I think it would probably still get the job done. I'm inclined to think the answer to Todd's question is that weapons during maile were effective enough that they didn't feel the need to design a dagger just for defeating it.
Those are very interesting tests! A well-made, properly shaped rondel dagger is quite an armor piercing murder machine... Coincidentally I just finished a video about unarmed defenses against daggers from various manuscripts, although it's not scheduled for publishing until about 3 weeks. Facing a dagger like this would be scary and brutal, that's for sure.
@@MrPlainsflyer Just better hope you are faster than guy running after you with this. Would be awful feeling to realize he is getting closer, and closer as you run
@@MrPlainsflyer unfortunately a lot of stab victims in the UK were running away when they were stabbed. Don't get me wrong, 'not being there' is the number 1 preference. But once the attack starts, very few victims are actually able to run away at all.
@@scholagladiatoria quite often people who try and run away are not already in motion whereas the attacker is so you need to have substantial amount of burst speed to pull away safely and overcome his initial advantage. The two times I have been stabbed I never saw it coming until I was hit and I got lucky they used tiny folding knives (one of the stabs was with a Swiss Army knife of a mere 3 inch total blade length for example). For me it was more a sudden agonising pain in lower abdomen and than going absolutely berserk with anything to hand to get them off me when they tried to stab again, I gotten lucky both times. If they had even an average sized kitchen knife that first stab would likely have put me out of action due to the surprise and much more damage that would have done and how much more difficult it would be to stop those knives than a small folding knife.
@@fduisterwinkel Well you can say estoc blades are somewhat inspired by rondels and as far as I remember estocs were sometimes used by cavalry if their lances were lost.
I imagine the reason they didn't bother with things like rondel daggers earlier is because they simply already had weapons that were 'good enough'. If they have a weapon that can pierce mail with a little effort, there isn't really any need to sacrifice versatility to develop a specialised blade to be even better at piercing armour until plate comes along.
Yeah, I think a big factor could be that spears, polearms and lances may have done that job most of the time but with much greater reach. The need for a dagger to fill that role may not have been in demand until much later when plate armor came around.
@@tods_workshop Yes please! And maybe spear? If the tip of a spear can penetrate mail with some force, it would be way better than a dagger, especially in formation.
I recently purchased one of Tod Cutler's Rondel daggers, it is fantastic. My mum asked me what's it for, my reply was, killing knights, a short silence and the conversation continued. Great tests and great products, thanks Tod and Matt👍
The sheer ease in which it penetrated the steel plate was quite honestly shocking! I figured you would get an inch, and that with a hard struck blow. Then you sank the blade almost to the wood! Holy cow! Now, I know that the steel wasn't shaped to an armor form, but still, what a test!
There are flat bits of any breastplate though and the back plate is far more flat. Granted I don’t think it would go through against a struggling opponent which would cause more slipping. Just goes to show why in the age of mild steel/wrought iron armor plates why they still often wore mail and/or gambeson under the plate.
@@ShiningDarknes absolutely! The struggling opponent always makes a huge difference. And the sheer ease of being able to inflict a lethal blow, even through thin plate like that, amazing!
It’s mild steel and on the thinner end of what armor would be. (It’s close to the thickness of what you might have on your arms, where the diameter would be smaller, increasing the chance of glancing off.)
I have something else to mention. In both attempts the plate was braced. On the first go it was braced against the table, and on the second go it was braced against the door. A person wearing plate has nothing to brace them aside from bodyweight, which provides far less resistance than a table or a door/wall. A more authentic test would be to position the plate against a punching bag roughly equivalent to the weight of a human, and I guarantee that he wouldn't have been able to just push through it. The bag would just move backwards with the push before penetration is achieved. He might still be able to thrust through it but not nearly as deeply. Resistance is a huge factor.
They haven´t tested the real way it was meant to be used, which was to knock down an armor clad knight to the ground, sitting on top of him, and putting the entire body weight on top of the rondel. It would go clean through, from side to side. I suspect a combination of a billhook and this dagger, would kill even the heaviest knight. Once the knight went down, he was dead.
@@Biden_is_demented well yeah, but this test shows that would obviously work since not even going full force penetrates metal and gambesons and maille super easy. Its just not as easy to set up a test like you said it would be used.
I would argue they are still for gaps (at least against plate armour) based on the armoured fighting techniques we see in treatises. All the wrestling, levering and looking for gaps is wasted effort if you can reliably stab through the plates.
Daggers are significantly less likely (if they even can) pierce armor that’s been shaped, hardened (through work hardening or quenching), and often times thicker than the steel tested here.
It's also worth noting that one's opponent is rarely going to simply lay still and flat to soak up a full-power stab at a clean angle. If you're close enough to stab with a dagger you're probably in a wrestling match and not at liberty to use all your strength to stab just any place you choose.
@@Robert399 True that. That shows that even if a dagger can reliably go through a flat thin plate, it would not go reliably through an actual armor - it could be curved, or it could be a bit thicker (and you couldn't just ask your foe "prithy, Sir Knight, is your armor under mm at its thickest point?"), or it could be hardened instead of "soft" steel (same oke here), or the rival could move a bit (and he would MOST DEFINITELY not collaborate standing still even if you asked nicely)... so instead of trusting an unreliable punching through plate, even if it could certainly be done, you would go for the gap that you KNEW would go through like hot knife through butter.
There appeared to be some flexing of the blade in one of Matt's first stabs. The blade is unlikely to break being mild steel, but a harder blade of the length and tiny cross section could break and injure the person wielding the dagger. When I was an apprentice toolmaker in the late 60s, I rather stupidly tried to ram the handle onto a 10 inch file by stabbing the wooden bench top. What happened is the file came out of the handle on the upstroke, and I effectively stabbed the file tang into the meaty base of my thumb! That was one of the worst injuries I suffered in 40 years in a workshop. I can imagine a similar thing happening with a poorly made rondel dagger. Obviously never with anything Todd makes of course.
Thi is amazing, I was a little scared at 18 when you placed both hands on top of the dagger, it looked like you had very little control and the blade could have slipped towards your body, I was in a HEMA tournament where an accident ocurred testing blades and the person almost killed himself. You are the weapons expert, so, just saying, take care, you are a treasure to us all.
Thank you, safety is an every day reminder. Complacency is what harms. We all know Tod is incredibly professional, but moments like these deserve criticism.
@@tods_workshop You are a marvel of knowledge and practical aplications of medieval weaponry, i'm just happy if I can help you in any way, keep the good work.
It's the one thing I think professional filming has over the scrappy do-it-yourself backyard UA-cam productions: requirements for insurance and (thus) someone on set whose entire job is watching and thinking through the safety aspects of everything that happens on and off-camera. Well, that and gobs of money to throw at professional experts and assistants. Oh, and craft services -- can't forget that! :P But as a single (or very small team) content creator, you have to wear all the hats at once: concept, design, engineering, execution, performance, on-camera persona, scheduler, safety coordinator, director, cinematographer, editor, etc. It's easy for one or more of those things to slip a little, and you REALLY don't want it to be safety! I'm surprised we don't have more deaths or at least serious injuries; Kentucky Ballistics cones to mind.
This is a fantastic co-lab. Your personalities and style of giving information really played off each other to perfection. It actually felt lke being a student coming across two science professors having a friendly debate that got so involved they pulled out the equipment to see whose idea was closest, rather than a polished YT video.
My first assumption of why they didn't use rondel daggers in the age of chain is that they didn't have plate armor to protect them while they get in distance to firmly plant a rondel dagger in someone. That kind of grappling just seems like the kind of thing that I'd feel more comfortable doing if I was covered from head to toe in steel plates.
The only counterpoint would be the shorter blades of some peoples, yes while not as short as this it's a similar idea. I wonder if it wasn't chosen as when it does go through that you don't really have that large of a wound channel as compared to a "normal" blade which still worked well enough to get through maile.
@@NotThatGuyJD I think it's more likely that shorter blades = dedicated infantry weapon while longer blade = can be used on foot and while mounted without being at any significant disadvantage .
@pp oh absolutely but I was wondering if the "standard" blades of the day weren't already good enough to defeat the chain of the period in some instances and thus no need for a dedicated anti chain dagger. Even when you had groups who fought in very close ranges.
We did (Boston Armizare) did a very similar experiment last year using a pair of Tod's rondels (and an Albion Type XVA sharp longsword) and had very similar results. We used two different samples of decent quality riveted mail secured onto an old suspended canvas boxing heavy bag. We found that with the rondels, a fendente (descending icepick grip thrust) with a passing step would consistently break the rings and achieve > 1"-2" of penetration into the bag, and it was subsequently easy to then drive the dagger much deeper through the target. 2-H thrusts (both normal and half sword) with the VXA longsword achieved very similar results, easily penetrating the mail!
@Tod, note the above for future testing equipment: a heavy canvas boxing heavy bag shouldn't be too difficult to acquire or run up on the machine, shirley? It could be used vs bowfire too..
Todd you look like you're having so much fun watching your creations perform as they're intended. Matt the look of surprise on just how easy the ronddel went through everything was priceless.
This was fantastic. It help to solidify in my mind what makes this profile so effective. With a two edged blade the round chainmail link will first deform into an ellipse before it will be cut through. There's a significant amount of energy that can be absorbed with the stretching of the metal. There's also a greater chance of increased friction as the ellipse wraps around the sides of a edged blade.The three edged blade, however, will not allow as much stretch in the chainmail ring and less friction, putting greater force on the ring in a shorter period of time, greater impulse force. This diminishes its ability to dissipate the energy. In addition, the blade cross section is not an equilateral triangle (which at first seemed the most logical configuration). As an equilateral cross-section, the blade would put the same amount of force at each edge. Instead, the cross section is an isosceles triangle which will put a greater amount of force on the more acute edge, they're by focusing greater energy at a single point on the chainmail link, with the other two edges acting as a wedge. It is a more brilliant design than I initially thought. I would love to see how this performs on modern kevlar!
kevlar is effective vs bullets... I don't think it actually does all that well against regular knives? I unfortunately don't have a proper source handy to back that up. could be wrong.
@@DraconianEmpath It doesn't. Any remotely sharp blade will still sever the fibers, so it's no better against knives than any other type of tough canvas. Kevlar is only really useful against small arms fire where the rounded projectile binds the fibers on impact and lessens penetration. Rifle rounds which are pointy and have much higher momentum will defeat it easily, which is why body armor still has metal plates in it.
@@luminusprime sappy plates aren't metal. I'm not sure of the material but it was some kind of composite. At least when I wore them over a decade ago. Edit: a quick Google search shows some body armors do use metal plates, so I was mistaken. Also the sapi (I misspelled earlier) plates are made of ceramics.
This really demonstrates that a rondel dagger is perfect for finishing off an opponent who's fallen on the ground. You might have trouble penetrating plate armour while someone on their feet is wearing it, because of the difficulty of getting it to hit squarely with force when your target is mobile so that it doesn't just deflect off the curves of the plate. But when someone is down on the ground you can just get on top of them and put your weight on the dagger to go right through their plate, let alone stabbing through gaps.
All the above plus you stab a person standing and they will "give" with the blow. Indeed, even on top, people are "squishy" and will absorb some of the force. But I'm not volunteering to be a live test dummy!😱😱
"you can just get on top of them and put your weight on the dagger" This is wrong. The steel in the video was poorly shaped, and relatively soft. Plate has curves and is much harder. You probably wouldn't ever try to push through someone's plate when they're on the ground, because it's still much easier to go for the gaps. Which means nothing has changed really. Far *far* more importantly, in terms of groundwork it's much easier to push someone out of mount if they're applying all of their bodyweight into one spot instead of spreading out. Granted, not every armoured knight is gonna be a BJJ blue belt, but that doesn't make it any less true. Being taken down and stabbed is plate armour's worst weakness so you're really incentivised to learn good groundwork. It's a good idea to at least get to the point where an untrained individual of a similar size stands basically no chance against you. Like for MMA, some degree of groundwork should be considered *essential* because most fights end up going to the ground at some point. Doubly so for people wearing plate, because taking you to the ground is the single easiest win condition.
@@drew2364 Demostrably untrue. I know you are talking about Crecy and Agincourt (and likely coflating both battles, because 90% of the French knight deaths at Crecy were because British knights pounding on them with pole weapons, not by archery - the archery was a setup for the former), but most knights on the several centuries of medieval France weren't even alive at the time of those two battles.
I think Matt said it in one of his earlier videos, that Viking Era & early Middle Age broad swords are excellent choppers. In the Viking Era (well, the early part, anyway) even maille is rare, so a chop or cutting slash against flesh with just a couple of layers of cloth over it is going to be pretty effective. In the later Viking Era & early Middle Ages maille is going to be effective against slashing cuts but a swinging chop has a good chance of crushing muscle & breaking bone; obviously a fighter is going to be using his shield to defend against such chopping cuts but, in battle, if your shield breaks, you're in trouble. Then, as you move into the later Middle Ages, you get the pointier arming swords evolving, which are more effective against maille because you have a fair chance of penetrating maille with the point of the sword; which leads to the evolution of plate armour; which leads to the evolution of the rondel dagger because it's much more difficult to get the point of a sword into the gaps in plate armour than it is a short bladed dagger.
I was going to say some of this. I’m an Old Norse specialist, and part of the puzzle for Scandinavia favoring broader swords despite the presence of mail was the rarity due to cost. Mail is time consuming and expensive, and most people seem to have not possessed extensive armor. Especially if we look at Iceland for example, with their being a very small number of professional warriors around, armor is extremely rarely mentioned in the Sagas of Icelanders, and even seldom mentioned in sagas that take place in foreign lands. So my assumption is that their weapons were catered towards what they encountered most often: lightly armored opponents. Additionally, the mail of the Viking Age typically left the lower arms, neck, and especially the legs exposed, leaving a whole host of options for an attacker unprotected. And given that like you said, mail is flexible and offers virtually no protection against blunt force, mail did not render broader swords, axes, or even heavy leaf-shaped spears harmless given one puts their back into it.
@@ravenfeeder Adding to this, rondel daggers are really short weapons, so it makes sense we see them grow popular when knights get well enough armored to start doing a lot of grappling, as otherwise the other guy would likely just keep bashing you with the longer weapon from outside your reach.
@@the_mad_fool Also a good point, and important to remember that warriors of this time, like now, never carried a single weapon. Several sources note that medieval Scandinavian warriors carried a long knife, a sword, and a spear together, sometimes even an additional axe. This allowed them to address as you mentioned, the constantly changing range of combat, and the different types of challenges they would come across on campaign. Axes were particularly good for raiding, because if you try to break down a door or bust open a coffer with a sword, you would look pretty stupid very quickly.
That old fashioned bloomery iron, along with Todd’s work is extremely impressive. Exiting with John Dowland was icing on this cake. 👍The song is “Can She Excuse My Wrongs?” I say, not if you poke her with that dagger.
The stout but low angle point is much more effective than I'd have expected, but it is achieving huge psi pressure. Reminds me of a story, possibly an urban legend, from the aircraft industry where they switched stewardesses from high heels to flats on early aircraft so they stopped punching through the aluminum floors.
I was surprised at how it penetrated that plate, very impressive. I was certain it would defeat the mail, but how easily it did so, that was unexpected. The bloomery steel was surprisingly tough.
I would also like to see tests with metallurgically accurate armor, but I am not sure that modern mild steel rivet mail with solid rings is going to be so much weaker than wrought iron. Mail made in period would inevitably have more impurities in the alloy then modern steels. I would be very interested if you had any scholarly articles which demonstrate that period accurate wrought iron mail is stronger than modern mail. Though even if it is stronger, based on these tests I think that the rondel could still pass through without too much trouble because Matt still had a lot of juice in the tank when he penetrated this mail and he could easily add a little more force to get through the period accurate mail if he needed to.
@@dgmt1 don't confuse commercial with reenactment. It was made of steel flat rings (probably mild steel), whole and riveted, and cut through both of them. Ofc actual chainmaille would be a bit more resistant, but this is still a useful analog
@@dgmt1 By all means feel free to send us more mail to stab. I am genuinely interested if there is mail that will perform notably better than this mail, but please note that this Indian mail is mild steel of the correct size and thickness, and every single stab *sheared* the steel. It didn't burst inferior rivets, or find places that there were missing rivets, it simply cut through solid steel every single time. And then stabbed to almost the same depth through 1.2mm steel sheet....
Have you seen the suit of armour made for Henry VIII at Greenwich, for foot combat? It's the one with the CND symbol on the cod-piece. The interesting thing is that as many of the inherent gaps in plate as possible have been protected with ingeniously hinged plates. This explains why such lengths were gone to, with the sovereign insisting on fighting in a tournament, and why he was willing to sacrifice some mobility for the extra protection.
Yes I was actually thinking the same thing while filming this video - the fact that a few select armourers went to HUGE effort to create plate articulation in the gaps where mail would normally be should tell us something. Mail is great and has many advantages, but rondel daggers (and things like the spikes on pollaxes) were designed to do a specific job.
@@scholagladiatoria if I may ask Matt, based on your experience with the dagger, do you believe the Rondel would be able to get through those plates? The articulated plates in the armpit and elbow I mean.
@@andrelaboy2002 I honestly don't know - I think the whole outcome would be very different when the plates are curved and the 'target' is a moving fighting person. I don't think Tod or I are here to argue that stabbing through real armour in a real fight is ever going to be easy, but what we were surprised by was how deep we went through a 1.2mm steel sheet... we were not expecting that, so it changes the bar on our expectations of everything else.
I loved watching the daggers journey through the three episodes. I am surprised at how easily it went through the steel plate. The rondels with the gauntlet was also eye-opening.
@@tods_workshop Absolutely. The mass contribution of the gauntlet and the energy transfer wasn't something I would have thought to account for. It makes sense in hindsight. I am wondering what would happen with the steel layered over the appropriate cloth padding and the pork? Would this mitigate enough energy transfer to avoid penetration?
I would totally buy a ruined testing dagger of you. I think it would be a great piece to sit over the mantle and a great conversation starter. Though seeing how well it held up is a real testament to its manufacturing quality.
A very interesting conclusion to this series of videos. The fact that the dagger stood up so well after all the punishing tests is a credit to your workmanship.
My speculation is that we didn't see rondels earlier is because of shields. Absolutely at grappling distance, a rondel is going to be very powerful option, but against a shield, it is going to be very difficult to get an ice pick grip stab past a shield. And what else is pretty good at grappling distance, or while someone is closing that gap, but a single handed choppy and stabby sword. My hypothesis is that in the same way that the armor development allowed for more usage if dedicated 2-handed weapons like longswords, very long polearms like bills/halberds, and "great swords" because it allowed the user to forgo shields, the development of armor both necessitated a powerful anti-armor weapon AND allowed the use enough defense against other weapons to allow for the use of such a weapon without worrying as much about getting hit by the enemy spear or Messer on the way in to deliver the blow. Perhaps Matt or possibly Skallagrim could do a bout where someone uses a sparring dagger in the reverse grip with a shield as well to see how easy they are used together?
Yeah. It's because of shields and infantry formation tactics. A rondel dagger can get stuck in the shield, and the blade can be grabbed more easily than that of a gladius (infct there's a lot of blade-grabbing in Fiore's treaty). It's not nice to have your blade grabbed by a Legionary, while another cuts your arm.
As a guy who makes knife as a hobby I have to say it was amazing watching you do this. Always inspires me to try all sorts of steels even if they are not the best.
What an amazing video. Even more excited for arrows vs armour 2 now! Also regarding the lack of rondel-style daggers earlier in European history, my armchair theory is that it was simply not a necessary invention at the time. In the Viking age at least, mail was the pinnacle of bodily protection worn mainly by the elite. Most opponents would not be wearing mail and those who did wear mail would only have so much coverage. For example, most would not have protection on the thighs as it was covered by the shield. Nearly any weapon could be effective as most Vikings, even the relatively well-armoured ones, would have large areas unprotected by any significant armour. Additionally, I would bet money that the most common weapons of the day, spears and axes, would be capable of inflicting serious damage through mail. The more we see of mail in practical tests like this, the more its weaknesses against puncture become apparent. I suspect a heavy spear thrust would sail through mail as if it weren't there. It also would be very interesting to see how much blunt force manages to project through mail. Even if an axe couldn't cut through mail, which I doubt it would to any significant extent, I would not want to suffer an axe blow to my forearm, clavicle, elbow, etc. with only mail as my protection.
This was a really great and interesting video. Both of you make great videos on your own, but these colabs takes it to another level. Thank you very much, and keep up the very good work
Would it be accurate to say Rondel daggers probably killed more knights than swords once plate armor became available? I have always respected the dagger and considered it to be the unsung hero and the workhorse of melee combat. I love this presentation by two of the most respected authorities on UA-cam for medieval combat.
Possibly, though swords evolved to have very pointy ends (ala rondel daggers). The fighting style then became using a sword as , effectively, a wrestling bar and a dagger in one. So both swords and daggers end up killing in similar ways.
@Wiz Rom This really isn't true. Ranged weapons did have a period of extreme dominance over personal armour, but it was much later. Even during the Napoleonics heavy cavalry still wore armour (infamously the French Curassiers).
Imagine trying to use a dagger in battle: "Excuse me, low born infantrymen with your long polearms, move aside and watch us knights grapple while you can have your formation battle with your peers. Don't you dare interfere and bash me over the head with that halberd while I role around on the ground trying to slip this thing into my opponent's armpit." So you've somehow lost your shield or your 2 handed polearm and are now grappling with a dagger while the enemy remains in formation. You have bigger priorities, like running back towards friendly lines to fetch a proper weapon. A short 1 handed weapon is not a "workhorse". It's a side arm of last resort.
Thank y'all for doing this fascinating test. According to the numbers from The Knight and the Blast Furnace, which are based on drop tests against mild steel plate, piercing 1.2mm mild steel with an arrow point to a depth of 40mm should take around 70-75 J. I believe the arrow point Alan Williams used was 18 degrees, so this dagger's point is probably rather narrower & more efficient at penetrating. Tests of kinetic energy with knife stabs have some figures above 75 J for overarm attacks at table height targets. In that sense, these results are broadly consistent with other tests. However, penetration does look awfully easy here. The results do raise the question of how mail was a dominant armor for so long, & how various sources mention that mail stopped stabbing attacks. Pietro Monte, for example, recommended doubled mail to protect the throat & neck area of a plate harness. He wrote that points often got through a single layer of mail, but apparently doubled mail provided better protection. Monte wrote in the late 15th century, when many weapons had points similar to this dagger. I suspect some historical armor was in fact intended mainly to stop weaker or glancing hits rather than providing the near invulnerability that a heavy plate harness of hardened steel offered.
I think you may be overlooking the role of momentum here. 75J is one thing, but the difference between it being delivered by an 80g arrow vs a 6kg arm or indeed a whole torso of weight makes for a very different action
@@tods_workshop I'm curious to see how attending to momentum & other factors may enrich existing models for assessing & understanding armor. Neither The Knight and the Blast Furnace nor the drop tests for modern stab-resistant armor that Alan Williams followed use momentum as the relevant measure. Instead, they use kinetic energy. Stab vests have ratings in joules. Dropping a point with a weight behind it does differ in various ways from shooting an arrow or striking or pushing with knife/dagger. The advantage of focusing on KE is that is relatively easy to measure (especially for projectiles), but it may not tell the whole story.
@@tods_workshop the mention of momentum doesn't track in your's and B.H comments. Could you elaborate? When I think of momentum I'm thinking of mass with movement. That IS kinetic energy, E=mc^2 So 75J from an arrow is an arrow moving much faster than 75J from an arm. The difference would be that Energy per unit area would be a lot smaller for an arrow than a fist, when considering penetrative power. What am I missing? OP seems to simply be saying that other tests also found that mild steel could be penetrated with a knife. And that the better geometry of the rondel is making it even easier than in the referenced test. So your tests are consistent with other independent testing. That's a good thing.
@@erithanis A bit late but if you are still wandering, momentum is mass times velocity, so when you have a heavier object with the same mass of the ligher object it will have more momentum, it is more related to the amount of movement a body have. Basically, given that the same force is applied in two objects with different mass and same energy, you will need to apply this force for a longer time in the heavier object, so it`s harder in this sense to stop this object.
Really enjoyed these three videos on the rondel dagger! Thanks Tod and Matt for doing these tests! It’s a little hard for people like me to do myself so I’m glad that there are people who can!
I assume the age of maille had a simple solution to maille, in spears, but also had a simple defense in shields. Also, if plated armour wasn't a big thing, I wonder if gauntlets weren't common, and if so then slashing weapons targeting extremities could have been extremely effective
The solution to armor during that period was simple to hit people where they're not armored. Full coverage wasn't really thing. And most combatants were unarmored anyway.
Great job guys! I think to add nuance to Tod's 'Arms Race' comment, the Rondel dagger came into prominence as plate evolved to such a degree of specialization that it was critical! I'm sure armored knights would rather not roll about wrestling in the mud but once their traditional mounted & side arms were lost or broken - Tah-Dah! Much as the early advent of modern armor only necessitated such counters as the .50 cal Browning machine-gun & Boy's Anti-tank rifles with armor piercing ammunition to defeat WW Once era & even the early Panzer 1 & 2 tanks, once tank development increased armor .50 cal/14.5mm rifles couldn't hack it. Thus the larger cannon armor piercing rounds, squash head (HESH) & shaped charge Anti-Tank (HEAT) became necessary. The average Infantry unit required dedicated-ish Anti-Tank guns like the 37mm & 57mm & the Bazooka & PIAT had to come on line... Because the armor was past the ability of the Anti-Armor weapons of the prior generation. Since mail doesn't possess the structural rigidity to disperse a blow as plate does, most weapons of previous generations could still deliver blows adequate to breaking down the warrior within. A hard enough blow to break an arm, collar bone, ribs etc - through mail would be distributed over a greater surface area on the body on the plate armored knight by the very nature of the plate's rigidity. No sharply focused point of impact transmission into the encased warrior means - ya gotta go to the soft spots & the shorter & stiffer the blade you wield to get into them, the better the effectiveness you can expect. Think discarding Sabot Armor piercing ammo - in a handheld package.
If a knight has been unhorsed and has lost most of his arms and is somehow down to a dagger his priorities would be survival ie running back towards friendly lines to fetch a proper weapon. Grappling is not conducive to that. It's the opposite of disengaging and escaping.
That was very impressive. What a fearsome weapon. I can see your sales going up after this! As Matt has pointed out in previous videos in the age of mail the penetrating role that rondel daggers fulfill would be taken by spears.
@@MusMasi Some angons have a similar edge geometry to some rondel daggers. And many of the late medieval polearms of course. But most of those narrow spearpoints I have seen are square in cross section unlike this dagger.
I love how Tod pushed on it, the same method can be seen in illustrations in La fleur des histoires de Jean Mansel TOME 2 - from around the 1470s by an man at arms with an equally large dagger how has put himself on top of an armored opponent and put the point to the neck area
On why we don't see these in the age of mail. First possible culprit is how widespread a piece of armor is - there is little point in making a specialized weapon against one guy out of a hundred, and you do see some early medieval soldiers with just helmet and a shield for defense. By the time late medieval period begins, absolutely everyone has some sort of armor, at least a gambeson, usually some chain mail as well and you start to see poor soldiers with partial plates. There are even records of absolutely dirt-poor last minute conscripts using straw soaked in tar as an improvised gambeson. A related point to this is that earlier chain mail armor sets don't necessarily cover that much of you (short sleeves, no coifs, etc), so you have the option of aiming for the gaps instead of trying to go through. Second possible culprit - well, you need to stab the chain mail with a seax and/or quillon dagger. I suspect that thrusts by these will be able to go through, even if they don't have the absolute best blade for it, but have a lot more trouble with plate.
Other daggers could have been fine at it? Spears, hammers, axes, swords etc give more range. Until plate made simple percussion less effective, the dagger as the tertiary weapon may not have had much thought.
Agreed, along with two other thoughts. With the quality of the metallurgy improving - when your thin rings start getting made of better, tougher steel your old daggers and sword shapes probably start to struggle rather more to get through sufficently, creating the requirement to change the weapon. There is also the usefulness as a tool - your leaf blade dagger can be used as needed around camp, around the dinner table, to skin and butcher as well as on the battlefield, the longer swords reasonably functional as a machete to clear brush - this very strong triangular spike profile is pretty much hopeless at anything but killing through armor - nobody wants to carry an extra 1Kg if they don't get anything for it, so while your more versatile blade forms are functional enough on the battle field there isn't a great need to change.
This was fun, these two are natural teammates for these kinds of inquiries. Just need Toby and an archer for a full team. Let’s test some spears against armor, and daggers against the full suit like the arrows were. Great job guys.
"Why weren't rondel daggers around earlier?" Perhaps the answer is that they absolutely were, we just don't have evidence for it since any tapestry or manual depicting them has been lost. In Fiore's books, circa 1410, there is already a developed and sophisticated system of the use of rondels, so presumably the weapons were already well-established and ubiquitous by then. The only manual we have older than that is the I.33, and that's exclusively for sword and buckler, so it's probably a reasonable assumption to make that rondels (or similar weapons) are much older than the available physical evidence for them.
I love your combo vids- design meets application. I was very surprised at the significance of penetration through both forms of armor. I expected near complete protection.
I love your channel. My wife interned at The Royal Armouries when it was in the Tower of London in the 90s before they moved the majority of the collection to Leeds and this kind of stuff always interested me. We got private tours at both the Tower from head curator and from the staff at Royal Armouries in Leeds about 15 years ago.
Awesome video man. Im shocked at how easily the maille was defeated. I guess we now know why some ppl wore a second layer over certain vital areas. I would have loved to see you try to make it through the plate with the maille and then the gambeson beneath it. Or with the maille doubled over. I can understand why you didn't if you didn't want to damage the dagger though.
It's great to see the two of you having such a good time. And educating us along the way. With regards to why the dagger took so long to appear, could it be to do with the presence of shields? That dagger seemed notably bad at penetrating wood.
That was my thought, too. The rondel dagger may have had to wait for shields to become much less commonplace before its development could really take off.
@@khublaklonk4480 that is a good point and keeping mind shields were pretty big for the time period where mail was the main form of high end armour so you might have had trouble to reach around and stab an opponent with the dagger.
Tod, based on the fact you had to sharpen the dagger after a few maile strikes...I'd like to have you do a tutorial on your sharpening techniques, and actually show how you do it on different edge types(i.e. knives, daggers, tomahawks, axes, and swords)
I wonder what the effect of angles on the chain mail and gamberson is. I suspect that in a real fight the weak points in plate would often be in spots that are harder to get a straight thrust at, like the arm pits, and where the person wearing the armour will be trying to turn and such to reduce penetration, at least if they are standing.
Tod i have a idea for why the edge alignment is not indexed to the handle and maybe it is something you could test. I think that the edge is indexed 90 degrees from the handle so that it can also be used to defend and block attacks without taking damage to the edge so that it will not reduce its ability to penetrate armor.
It would be interesting trying this with armor moving like your in battle and actually moving. Side way motion compared to dagger might increase friction and change angle it hitting at lowering penetration but also might make wound bigger?
Good question - my guess would be that the fabric and mail would still penetrate but the plate would glance off. Glancing off might still be deadly because you might slide sideways to a gap in the plate.
I know you said you didn't want to, but if would be great to see this against a proper breast plate. Given the 200lb war bow struggled to pierce from a fairly close distance it'd be insane if this made it through relatively easily. Maybe one day!
I don't think you'd get through a shaped breastplate made of the appropriate thickness and type of steel with a dagger. A lot of this is about whether or not the tip "grips" before it slips off. I'm certain that a bodkin from even a modestly powerful bow would go straight through this 1.2 mm mild steel... this is more representative of the thinner bits of armour on limbs or articulated to cover the groin or joints than it is the main plates.
@@chemistrykrang8065 Most breastplates in the late 14th through the 15th centuries were made out of wrought iron with a fairly high slag content. Their generally high slag, sulfur and phosphorus content made them mechanically more like cast iron. Modern medium carbon steel is superior to all but the very best steels that were used to make breastplates and other armours during the late medieval period. Only something like 5% of men in plate armour on the late medieval European battlefield would have had breastplates as good or better than the one Tod tested. If Tod's armourer had recreated the original breastplate his replica was patterned on perfectly, because of its unusually high carbon content and above average thickness, it still would have been better than ~85% of late medieval breastplates.
@@Marmocet It's definitely true that armour quality would be very variable, and I think it's reasonable to argue that the breastplate used in the archery tests by Tod represents the better end of that spectrum... but also that rich folks intending to go do stuff that would entail having arrows shot at them would probably be trying to get that quality and could afford it. Honestly I think the rondel dagger would probably struggle with 3 mm of curved (i.e. shaped like a breastplate) mild steel too to be honest. Hardness does definitely make a huge difference but given the relatively low mass and momentum of a dagger (vs a polearm etc) I think a bit of a curve and some extra thickness would help a lot.
@Chemistry Krang I should have added that what I said was based heavily on the survey and metalurgical analyses of medieval armour conducted by Alan Williams in _The Knight and the Blast Furnace._ Williams' work actually lets us put some figures on this subject. Based on Williams' work, we can estimate that the median (50th percentile) fracture toughness of late medieval armour was ~180 kJ/m^2. The fracture toughness of pure wrought iron (iron without slag or other impurities) is ~200 kJ/m^2, so the metal used to make half of late medieval armour wasn't even as tough as pure wrought iron. This is because medieval iron and steel typically contained large amounts of slag, sulfur and phosphorus. Pure wrought iron was tougher than ~63% of late medieval armour metal. Modern 1005 steel, the grade of steel with the lowest carbon content you can typically get today, has an average carbon content of 0.05%. Modern 1005 steel contains manganese, something that medieval iron and steel did not. Because of its manganese content, 1oo5 steel has an equivalent carbon percentage of 0.12%. Its average fracture toughness is ~220 kJ/m^2. It is tougher than ~74% of medieval armour. Modern 1020 steel, which is probably what Tod used in this test, has an average carbon equivalent of 0.28% and an average fracture toughness of 250 kJ/m^2, making it tougher than ~83% of medieval steel. The replica breastplate in Tod's "arrows versus armour" test was based on the Churburg 14 breastplate. The Churburg 14 breastplate's average carbon content is ~0.6%. Its slag content was not tested, but Italian armour of that period typically contained 1-2% slag, so the original breastplate's fracture toughness is probably 240-255 kJ/m^2, making it tougher than 80-85% of late medieval armour. At 2.5 mm at its thickest point, it was also ~14-19% thicker than the median breastplate of its period, so it would take ~75% more energy per unit area to pierce it than a late medieval median quality, median thickness breastplate of the same design. The original was not an average quality breastplate, as Tod's armourer suggested. In its day, that breastplate was close to top tier quality. The replica of the Churburg 14 breastplate Tod used was made of modern 1050 steel, which has an average carbon equivalent of 0.635% and an average fracture toughness of 320 kJ/m^2. That is tougher than ~94% of late medieval armour metal. Combined with the breastplate's above average thickness, it would take *~226% more energy per unit area* to pierce it than it would to pierce a breastplate of the same design of late medieval median quality and median thickness. It would be seriously in error to form your expectations about what would typically happen to armour when shot/stabbed/struck on the basis of Tod's test. A breastplate of the quality Tod tested would have been rare, not typical.
Wonderful science being done Tod. I really didnt think the rondal dagger would penetrate so deep on the plate steel. My eyes have been opened. Thanks for the film.
For the pushing with both hands, Tod's version against the plate may not be entirely unrepresentative: Let's not forget that you would be wearing all your armour and pushing down with a lot of extra mass.
Scary how effective that turned out to be! Even if you speculate that you'd only get a quarter as much penetration against an armoured and manoeuvering opponent that's still going to hurt!
Rondels probably didn't exist before the advent of 'full' plate armour because 1. Shields 2. A spear is superior in that context. If you look at spearheads from the time where maille was the primary defence you will find many with not dissimilar sections to Rondels...*I really like you did the Rondel in bloomery steel, lovely*
I really enjoyed this trilogy of films. It tickled three different parts of my brain with the crafting, history, and mechanical testing centered around this one representation of an historical object.
Did the gauntlet help keep the dagger on a more perpendicular angle after contact? At the end I was expecting a bit of John Wick hammering on the pommel to get extra penetration.
One thing regarding mail: In the age of mail, the mail armour was pretty much never made from uniform rings - they would very in size and thickness quite heavily, being large and thick on the torso, getting progressively smaller along the arms and legs, and the smallest and thinnest at the joints. I have seen an original, although it was a later piece - late 16th or 17th century Polish or Hungarian cavalry mail armour - which had the exact properties I've described, and the thickest rings looked pretty damn thick and sturdy to me. If earlier medieval pieces were made similarly, they would've been quite resilient against stabs. Although a dagger like this would fair remarkably well against thinner parts of the mail (as we have just seen, thank you both, gentlemen!) I'm sceptical if it would penetrate the thicker parts of the armour. One more study to be made, i guess.
Yes. We shouldn't take the mail tested here as representative of all historical mail. However, we have long known that historical manuals instruct stabbing at areas of a plate harness covered with mail gussets. So it's perfectly expected for a dagger designed for armored fighting to be able to defeat the sort of mail worn over the armpits.
@@b.h.abbott-motley2427 By all means yes, I am aware. I was referring to the discussion on why there wasn't many anti-mail daggers/swords in the age of mail - maybe the rarity and elite status of mail, as well as the construction of the rings on the majority of the body, possibly combined with how the martial arts systems worked at the time (as far as I know we know very little on how people fought at the time, but I assume there were systems which simply were not preserved in a manual, like in later periods) made the thrusts less reliable on a battlefield and civilian settings than the cuts? How relevant my observation may be is up for debate, but than again, that's why I've posted this here - to provoke a discussion, so thanks for the answer.
I am impressed! I knew the use of the rondel, but always assumed that it was only marginally more capable of piercing armor than other weapons, I never expected it to pop mail quite so easily, and I am absolutely amazed it can be simply pressed through a sheet of steel.
There is something particular striking about how the rondel just slides right in from the push. Something about that feels more violent and grim than the stab proper. The SOUND it makes, and the way Easton just leans into it. Knife fighting is kinda terrifying, actually.
I wonder if the Rondel wasn't used as more of a prop. Not to say it wasn't effective, but in a real life or death battle, plenty of things can cause horrific injury to armored opponents. Even your gauntleted fist could do in a pinch. However if you want someone to yield, without you injuring them, then the Rondel is incredible. And maybe that's the difference? Maybe it took until that late medieval period before Hostage taking was a big enough industry that Knights wanted a weapon that could pull double duty; both as an actual backup weapon against armor, and as a weapon you could use to hold someone up at knife-point even if they were armored.
Regarding the discussion about why these daggers weren't used before plate armor in history; I think they used short spears instead, perhaps custom edge for chainmail.
It's always going to be a great video when Matt & Tod are together!! 👍👍 Extremely impressed by the strength of this dagger, not only is it a beautifully crafted it's also tough as nails!
I had SO much fun filming this one Tod. I think that the results are probably going to be quite shocking to a lot of people. They surprised me. I want to stab more stuff now ;-)
Cool
as someone who watches both of you, I would certainly love to see you stab more stuff on your channel too! That or more colabs with Todd!
I'd love to see the same test with a Gladius. A weapon that spent most of it's time versus mail wearing opponents.
Hey ... do you have any insights on the handle orientation? I think several people here are reallky curious about that!
@@Hedgehobbit I suspect that it wouldn't be *as good as* the rondel, but a gladius appears to be a stabby stabby weapon more than a slashy slashy one. So I think it would probably still get the job done.
I'm inclined to think the answer to Todd's question is that weapons during maile were effective enough that they didn't feel the need to design a dagger just for defeating it.
Those are very interesting tests! A well-made, properly shaped rondel dagger is quite an armor piercing murder machine...
Coincidentally I just finished a video about unarmed defenses against daggers from various manuscripts, although it's not scheduled for publishing until about 3 weeks. Facing a dagger like this would be scary and brutal, that's for sure.
The time honored anti knife technique of running would be my first option against this I think.
@@MrPlainsflyer Just better hope you are faster than guy running after you with this. Would be awful feeling to realize he is getting closer, and closer as you run
@@lalli8152 You surely know that running with a sharp object is dangerous!
@@MrPlainsflyer unfortunately a lot of stab victims in the UK were running away when they were stabbed. Don't get me wrong, 'not being there' is the number 1 preference. But once the attack starts, very few victims are actually able to run away at all.
@@scholagladiatoria quite often people who try and run away are not already in motion whereas the attacker is so you need to have substantial amount of burst speed to pull away safely and overcome his initial advantage.
The two times I have been stabbed I never saw it coming until I was hit and I got lucky they used tiny folding knives (one of the stabs was with a Swiss Army knife of a mere 3 inch total blade length for example).
For me it was more a sudden agonising pain in lower abdomen and than going absolutely berserk with anything to hand to get them off me when they tried to stab again, I gotten lucky both times.
If they had even an average sized kitchen knife that first stab would likely have put me out of action due to the surprise and much more damage that would have done and how much more difficult it would be to stop those knives than a small folding knife.
It's so great to see this sort of testing. Brilliant (and slightly terrifying) to know this geometry of dagger is so good as its job. Well done chaps.
I'd love to see you involved in some of these types of films with the rest of the gang.
@@DRB3055 Rondel dagger from horseback, that will be something. It won't be practical, but it will be something.
@@fduisterwinkel oh people dove off horses with daggers all the time. It works very good.
@@fduisterwinkel Well you can say estoc blades are somewhat inspired by rondels and as far as I remember estocs were sometimes used by cavalry if their lances were lost.
Thanks Jason I know we keep trying to do something together and one day I am sure we can pull something off.
I imagine the reason they didn't bother with things like rondel daggers earlier is because they simply already had weapons that were 'good enough'. If they have a weapon that can pierce mail with a little effort, there isn't really any need to sacrifice versatility to develop a specialised blade to be even better at piercing armour until plate comes along.
Good point - so lets test earlier blades
Yeah, I think a big factor could be that spears, polearms and lances may have done that job most of the time but with much greater reach. The need for a dagger to fill that role may not have been in demand until much later when plate armor came around.
I imagine spears would have played that piercing role much more. Swords are a lot less common
@@tods_workshop not blades, but spears
@@tods_workshop Yes please! And maybe spear? If the tip of a spear can penetrate mail with some force, it would be way better than a dagger, especially in formation.
The two of you together are extra entertaining and informative. You play well off each other.
Thanks
@@tods_workshop most excellent of collaborations
I recently purchased one of Tod Cutler's Rondel daggers, it is fantastic. My mum asked me what's it for, my reply was, killing knights, a short silence and the conversation continued. Great tests and great products, thanks Tod and Matt👍
Better to have and not need than need and not have
The sheer ease in which it penetrated the steel plate was quite honestly shocking! I figured you would get an inch, and that with a hard struck blow. Then you sank the blade almost to the wood! Holy cow! Now, I know that the steel wasn't shaped to an armor form, but still, what a test!
There are flat bits of any breastplate though and the back plate is far more flat. Granted I don’t think it would go through against a struggling opponent which would cause more slipping.
Just goes to show why in the age of mild steel/wrought iron armor plates why they still often wore mail and/or gambeson under the plate.
@@ShiningDarknes absolutely! The struggling opponent always makes a huge difference. And the sheer ease of being able to inflict a lethal blow, even through thin plate like that, amazing!
It’s mild steel and on the thinner end of what armor would be. (It’s close to the thickness of what you might have on your arms, where the diameter would be smaller, increasing the chance of glancing off.)
I have something else to mention. In both attempts the plate was braced. On the first go it was braced against the table, and on the second go it was braced against the door. A person wearing plate has nothing to brace them aside from bodyweight, which provides far less resistance than a table or a door/wall. A more authentic test would be to position the plate against a punching bag roughly equivalent to the weight of a human, and I guarantee that he wouldn't have been able to just push through it. The bag would just move backwards with the push before penetration is achieved. He might still be able to thrust through it but not nearly as deeply. Resistance is a huge factor.
@@jacobesterson very true.
"I want to see if I can touch wood." Matt never wastes an opportunity for innuendo. 😆 Great stuff as always, Todd. Kudos!
Two rings with an average stab got me 😂😂😂😂
He used to struggle against all the penetration, but now he seems to like it.
They haven´t tested the real way it was meant to be used, which was to knock down an armor clad knight to the ground, sitting on top of him, and putting the entire body weight on top of the rondel. It would go clean through, from side to side. I suspect a combination of a billhook and this dagger, would kill even the heaviest knight. Once the knight went down, he was dead.
@@Biden_is_demented well yeah, but this test shows that would obviously work since not even going full force penetrates metal and gambesons and maille super easy.
Its just not as easy to set up a test like you said it would be used.
“Boards don't hit back”. Well, now we know why.
This completely changed my view on daggers. It's clearly not just for eye slots or gap's 😲
I Agree 100%. Probably the most effective weapon on the battlefield after watching this demonstration.
I would argue they are still for gaps (at least against plate armour) based on the armoured fighting techniques we see in treatises. All the wrestling, levering and looking for gaps is wasted effort if you can reliably stab through the plates.
Daggers are significantly less likely (if they even can) pierce armor that’s been shaped, hardened (through work hardening or quenching), and often times thicker than the steel tested here.
It's also worth noting that one's opponent is rarely going to simply lay still and flat to soak up a full-power stab at a clean angle. If you're close enough to stab with a dagger you're probably in a wrestling match and not at liberty to use all your strength to stab just any place you choose.
@@Robert399 True that. That shows that even if a dagger can reliably go through a flat thin plate, it would not go reliably through an actual armor - it could be curved, or it could be a bit thicker (and you couldn't just ask your foe "prithy, Sir Knight, is your armor under mm at its thickest point?"), or it could be hardened instead of "soft" steel (same oke here), or the rival could move a bit (and he would MOST DEFINITELY not collaborate standing still even if you asked nicely)... so instead of trusting an unreliable punching through plate, even if it could certainly be done, you would go for the gap that you KNEW would go through like hot knife through butter.
The best advert for products I’ve ever seen thanks guys 😁😁
The sheer joy of Todd looking at his dagger going through the mail like butter hahaha
I love when he's like "I thought the mail would do better" but you can tell he's absolutely delighted.
"huh... that happened"
There appeared to be some flexing of the blade in one of Matt's first stabs. The blade is unlikely to break being mild steel, but a harder blade of the length and tiny cross section could break and injure the person wielding the dagger. When I was an apprentice toolmaker in the late 60s, I rather stupidly tried to ram the handle onto a 10 inch file by stabbing the wooden bench top. What happened is the file came out of the handle on the upstroke, and I effectively stabbed the file tang into the meaty base of my thumb! That was one of the worst injuries I suffered in 40 years in a workshop. I can imagine a similar thing happening with a poorly made rondel dagger. Obviously never with anything Todd makes of course.
Thi is amazing, I was a little scared at 18 when you placed both hands on top of the dagger, it looked like you had very little control and the blade could have slipped towards your body, I was in a HEMA tournament where an accident ocurred testing blades and the person almost killed himself. You are the weapons expert, so, just saying, take care, you are a treasure to us all.
Yeah, I think I would have felt safer if Todd had also been wearing armour for that bit! :O
Thank you, safety is an every day reminder. Complacency is what harms. We all know Tod is incredibly professional, but moments like these deserve criticism.
Noted. I felt the tip stick so it felt OK, but yes watching back perhaps it was not a great choice - apologies
@@tods_workshop You are a marvel of knowledge and practical aplications of medieval weaponry, i'm just happy if I can help you in any way, keep the good work.
It's the one thing I think professional filming has over the scrappy do-it-yourself backyard UA-cam productions: requirements for insurance and (thus) someone on set whose entire job is watching and thinking through the safety aspects of everything that happens on and off-camera. Well, that and gobs of money to throw at professional experts and assistants. Oh, and craft services -- can't forget that! :P
But as a single (or very small team) content creator, you have to wear all the hats at once: concept, design, engineering, execution, performance, on-camera persona, scheduler, safety coordinator, director, cinematographer, editor, etc. It's easy for one or more of those things to slip a little, and you REALLY don't want it to be safety! I'm surprised we don't have more deaths or at least serious injuries; Kentucky Ballistics cones to mind.
This is a fantastic co-lab. Your personalities and style of giving information really played off each other to perfection. It actually felt lke being a student coming across two science professors having a friendly debate that got so involved they pulled out the equipment to see whose idea was closest, rather than a polished YT video.
So true. What I love most in life!
Two friendly professors is exactly the vibe I got from this. Terrific video.
My first assumption of why they didn't use rondel daggers in the age of chain is that they didn't have plate armor to protect them while they get in distance to firmly plant a rondel dagger in someone.
That kind of grappling just seems like the kind of thing that I'd feel more comfortable doing if I was covered from head to toe in steel plates.
Also, since you're opponent wasn't wearing plate either, you didn't need all the extra precision a dagger offers over a spear for example.
The only counterpoint would be the shorter blades of some peoples, yes while not as short as this it's a similar idea. I wonder if it wasn't chosen as when it does go through that you don't really have that large of a wound channel as compared to a "normal" blade which still worked well enough to get through maile.
I'd like to see how effective a Gladius was in similar circumstances. I suspect that they would penetrate mail just as easily.
@@NotThatGuyJD
I think it's more likely that shorter blades = dedicated infantry weapon while longer blade = can be used on foot and while mounted without being at any significant disadvantage .
@pp oh absolutely but I was wondering if the "standard" blades of the day weren't already good enough to defeat the chain of the period in some instances and thus no need for a dedicated anti chain dagger. Even when you had groups who fought in very close ranges.
We did (Boston Armizare) did a very similar experiment last year using a pair of Tod's rondels (and an Albion Type XVA sharp longsword) and had very similar results. We used two different samples of decent quality riveted mail secured onto an old suspended canvas boxing heavy bag. We found that with the rondels, a fendente (descending icepick grip thrust) with a passing step would consistently break the rings and achieve > 1"-2" of penetration into the bag, and it was subsequently easy to then drive the dagger much deeper through the target. 2-H thrusts (both normal and half sword) with the VXA longsword achieved very similar results, easily penetrating the mail!
@Tod, note the above for future testing equipment: a heavy canvas boxing heavy bag shouldn't be too difficult to acquire or run up on the machine, shirley? It could be used vs bowfire too..
Todd you look like you're having so much fun watching your creations perform as they're intended. Matt the look of surprise on just how easy the ronddel went through everything was priceless.
This was fantastic. It help to solidify in my mind what makes this profile so effective. With a two edged blade the round chainmail link will first deform into an ellipse before it will be cut through. There's a significant amount of energy that can be absorbed with the stretching of the metal. There's also a greater chance of increased friction as the ellipse wraps around the sides of a edged blade.The three edged blade, however, will not allow as much stretch in the chainmail ring and less friction, putting greater force on the ring in a shorter period of time, greater impulse force. This diminishes its ability to dissipate the energy. In addition, the blade cross section is not an equilateral triangle (which at first seemed the most logical configuration). As an equilateral cross-section, the blade would put the same amount of force at each edge. Instead, the cross section is an isosceles triangle which will put a greater amount of force on the more acute edge, they're by focusing greater energy at a single point on the chainmail link, with the other two edges acting as a wedge. It is a more brilliant design than I initially thought. I would love to see how this performs on modern kevlar!
kevlar is effective vs bullets... I don't think it actually does all that well against regular knives? I unfortunately don't have a proper source handy to back that up. could be wrong.
@@DraconianEmpath It doesn't. Any remotely sharp blade will still sever the fibers, so it's no better against knives than any other type of tough canvas. Kevlar is only really useful against small arms fire where the rounded projectile binds the fibers on impact and lessens penetration. Rifle rounds which are pointy and have much higher momentum will defeat it easily, which is why body armor still has metal plates in it.
Kevlar is useless for stopping anything really pointy, it will go through kevlar like butter.
@@luminusprime sappy plates aren't metal. I'm not sure of the material but it was some kind of composite. At least when I wore them over a decade ago.
Edit: a quick Google search shows some body armors do use metal plates, so I was mistaken. Also the sapi (I misspelled earlier) plates are made of ceramics.
You potentially answered their question here of why the design was not seen in the age of mail. It was not something easily stumbled upon.
This really demonstrates that a rondel dagger is perfect for finishing off an opponent who's fallen on the ground. You might have trouble penetrating plate armour while someone on their feet is wearing it, because of the difficulty of getting it to hit squarely with force when your target is mobile so that it doesn't just deflect off the curves of the plate. But when someone is down on the ground you can just get on top of them and put your weight on the dagger to go right through their plate, let alone stabbing through gaps.
All the above plus you stab a person standing and they will "give" with the blow.
Indeed, even on top, people are "squishy" and will absorb some of the force.
But I'm not volunteering to be a live test dummy!😱😱
This makes killing a knight seem allot easier now, that dagger is scary !
"you can just get on top of them and put your weight on the dagger" This is wrong. The steel in the video was poorly shaped, and relatively soft. Plate has curves and is much harder. You probably wouldn't ever try to push through someone's plate when they're on the ground, because it's still much easier to go for the gaps. Which means nothing has changed really.
Far *far* more importantly, in terms of groundwork it's much easier to push someone out of mount if they're applying all of their bodyweight into one spot instead of spreading out. Granted, not every armoured knight is gonna be a BJJ blue belt, but that doesn't make it any less true. Being taken down and stabbed is plate armour's worst weakness so you're really incentivised to learn good groundwork. It's a good idea to at least get to the point where an untrained individual of a similar size stands basically no chance against you.
Like for MMA, some degree of groundwork should be considered *essential* because most fights end up going to the ground at some point. Doubly so for people wearing plate, because taking you to the ground is the single easiest win condition.
@@jake4194 most knights (French) were killed by bobkin arrows
@@drew2364 Demostrably untrue. I know you are talking about Crecy and Agincourt (and likely coflating both battles, because 90% of the French knight deaths at Crecy were because British knights pounding on them with pole weapons, not by archery - the archery was a setup for the former), but most knights on the several centuries of medieval France weren't even alive at the time of those two battles.
I think Matt said it in one of his earlier videos, that Viking Era & early Middle Age broad swords are excellent choppers. In the Viking Era (well, the early part, anyway) even maille is rare, so a chop or cutting slash against flesh with just a couple of layers of cloth over it is going to be pretty effective. In the later Viking Era & early Middle Ages maille is going to be effective against slashing cuts but a swinging chop has a good chance of crushing muscle & breaking bone; obviously a fighter is going to be using his shield to defend against such chopping cuts but, in battle, if your shield breaks, you're in trouble. Then, as you move into the later Middle Ages, you get the pointier arming swords evolving, which are more effective against maille because you have a fair chance of penetrating maille with the point of the sword; which leads to the evolution of plate armour; which leads to the evolution of the rondel dagger because it's much more difficult to get the point of a sword into the gaps in plate armour than it is a short bladed dagger.
I was going to say some of this. I’m an Old Norse specialist, and part of the puzzle for Scandinavia favoring broader swords despite the presence of mail was the rarity due to cost. Mail is time consuming and expensive, and most people seem to have not possessed extensive armor. Especially if we look at Iceland for example, with their being a very small number of professional warriors around, armor is extremely rarely mentioned in the Sagas of Icelanders, and even seldom mentioned in sagas that take place in foreign lands. So my assumption is that their weapons were catered towards what they encountered most often: lightly armored opponents. Additionally, the mail of the Viking Age typically left the lower arms, neck, and especially the legs exposed, leaving a whole host of options for an attacker unprotected. And given that like you said, mail is flexible and offers virtually no protection against blunt force, mail did not render broader swords, axes, or even heavy leaf-shaped spears harmless given one puts their back into it.
@@ravenfeeder Adding to this, rondel daggers are really short weapons, so it makes sense we see them grow popular when knights get well enough armored to start doing a lot of grappling, as otherwise the other guy would likely just keep bashing you with the longer weapon from outside your reach.
@@the_mad_fool Also a good point, and important to remember that warriors of this time, like now, never carried a single weapon. Several sources note that medieval Scandinavian warriors carried a long knife, a sword, and a spear together, sometimes even an additional axe. This allowed them to address as you mentioned, the constantly changing range of combat, and the different types of challenges they would come across on campaign. Axes were particularly good for raiding, because if you try to break down a door or bust open a coffer with a sword, you would look pretty stupid very quickly.
That old fashioned bloomery iron, along with Todd’s work is extremely impressive.
Exiting with John Dowland was icing on this cake. 👍The song is “Can She Excuse My Wrongs?”
I say, not if you poke her with that dagger.
I am from Kyiv, and your collab with your guest is very satisfying to watch
The stout but low angle point is much more effective than I'd have expected, but it is achieving huge psi pressure. Reminds me of a story, possibly an urban legend, from the aircraft industry where they switched stewardesses from high heels to flats on early aircraft so they stopped punching through the aluminum floors.
Opponent mired on wet ground, stunned or held down...dead. Effective finishing weapon. Great video.
The two of you together - always intertaining, always interesting and educational. Keep it coming!
I was surprised at how it penetrated that plate, very impressive. I was certain it would defeat the mail, but how easily it did so, that was unexpected. The bloomery steel was surprisingly tough.
Yes I was surprised by how well it stood up
Oh man going through rings like butter… I would not want to have Matt going after my Voiders with a Tod Rodel at hand. It just sinks right through!
@@dgmt1 it's not costume mail. It's real steel. It just isn't super high end. And it wasn't the joint that broke, the dagger cut through the ring.
I would also like to see tests with metallurgically accurate armor, but I am not sure that modern mild steel rivet mail with solid rings is going to be so much weaker than wrought iron.
Mail made in period would inevitably have more impurities in the alloy then modern steels. I would be very interested if you had any scholarly articles which demonstrate that period accurate wrought iron mail is stronger than modern mail.
Though even if it is stronger, based on these tests I think that the rondel could still pass through without too much trouble because Matt still had a lot of juice in the tank when he penetrated this mail and he could easily add a little more force to get through the period accurate mail if he needed to.
@@dgmt1 don't confuse commercial with reenactment.
It was made of steel flat rings (probably mild steel), whole and riveted, and cut through both of them. Ofc actual chainmaille would be a bit more resistant, but this is still a useful analog
@@dgmt1 Its not that at all. Stop with the disinformation.
@@dgmt1 By all means feel free to send us more mail to stab. I am genuinely interested if there is mail that will perform notably better than this mail, but please note that this Indian mail is mild steel of the correct size and thickness, and every single stab *sheared* the steel. It didn't burst inferior rivets, or find places that there were missing rivets, it simply cut through solid steel every single time. And then stabbed to almost the same depth through 1.2mm steel sheet....
This video really makes this dagger out to be a gnarly weapon. Wouldn't wanna be on the point end of this, ever.
Have you seen the suit of armour made for Henry VIII at Greenwich, for foot combat? It's the one with the CND symbol on the cod-piece. The interesting thing is that as many of the inherent gaps in plate as possible have been protected with ingeniously hinged plates. This explains why such lengths were gone to, with the sovereign insisting on fighting in a tournament, and why he was willing to sacrifice some mobility for the extra protection.
Yes I was actually thinking the same thing while filming this video - the fact that a few select armourers went to HUGE effort to create plate articulation in the gaps where mail would normally be should tell us something. Mail is great and has many advantages, but rondel daggers (and things like the spikes on pollaxes) were designed to do a specific job.
@@scholagladiatoria if I may ask Matt, based on your experience with the dagger, do you believe the Rondel would be able to get through those plates? The articulated plates in the armpit and elbow I mean.
@@andrelaboy2002 I honestly don't know - I think the whole outcome would be very different when the plates are curved and the 'target' is a moving fighting person. I don't think Tod or I are here to argue that stabbing through real armour in a real fight is ever going to be easy, but what we were surprised by was how deep we went through a 1.2mm steel sheet... we were not expecting that, so it changes the bar on our expectations of everything else.
A thoughtful UA-cam comment?
@@scholagladiatoria Wouldn't proper armor not be mild steel but hardened, though?
I loved watching the daggers journey through the three episodes. I am surprised at how easily it went through the steel plate. The rondels with the gauntlet was also eye-opening.
Thanks and I was also surprised by so much in this film, but partly the mass of the gauntlets
@@tods_workshop Absolutely. The mass contribution of the gauntlet and the energy transfer wasn't something I would have thought to account for. It makes sense in hindsight. I am wondering what would happen with the steel layered over the appropriate cloth padding and the pork? Would this mitigate enough energy transfer to avoid penetration?
The stab, that went all the way into the door, was honestly shocking!
Such good chemistry with these lads. thanks much!
I would totally buy a ruined testing dagger of you. I think it would be a great piece to sit over the mantle and a great conversation starter. Though seeing how well it held up is a real testament to its manufacturing quality.
A very interesting conclusion to this series of videos. The fact that the dagger stood up so well after all the punishing tests is a credit to your workmanship.
My speculation is that we didn't see rondels earlier is because of shields. Absolutely at grappling distance, a rondel is going to be very powerful option, but against a shield, it is going to be very difficult to get an ice pick grip stab past a shield. And what else is pretty good at grappling distance, or while someone is closing that gap, but a single handed choppy and stabby sword. My hypothesis is that in the same way that the armor development allowed for more usage if dedicated 2-handed weapons like longswords, very long polearms like bills/halberds, and "great swords" because it allowed the user to forgo shields, the development of armor both necessitated a powerful anti-armor weapon AND allowed the use enough defense against other weapons to allow for the use of such a weapon without worrying as much about getting hit by the enemy spear or Messer on the way in to deliver the blow.
Perhaps Matt or possibly Skallagrim could do a bout where someone uses a sparring dagger in the reverse grip with a shield as well to see how easy they are used together?
Yeah. It's because of shields and infantry formation tactics. A rondel dagger can get stuck in the shield, and the blade can be grabbed more easily than that of a gladius (infct there's a lot of blade-grabbing in Fiore's treaty). It's not nice to have your blade grabbed by a Legionary, while another cuts your arm.
After reading Bernard Cornwell i refer to those daggers as eye pokers. In his books they are used for that. Lift visor and poke at eyes.
As a guy who makes knife as a hobby I have to say it was amazing watching you do this. Always inspires me to try all sorts of steels even if they are not the best.
I really wasn't expecting it to go through the steel with the push. Frightening stuff.
What an amazing video. Even more excited for arrows vs armour 2 now!
Also regarding the lack of rondel-style daggers earlier in European history, my armchair theory is that it was simply not a necessary invention at the time. In the Viking age at least, mail was the pinnacle of bodily protection worn mainly by the elite. Most opponents would not be wearing mail and those who did wear mail would only have so much coverage. For example, most would not have protection on the thighs as it was covered by the shield. Nearly any weapon could be effective as most Vikings, even the relatively well-armoured ones, would have large areas unprotected by any significant armour.
Additionally, I would bet money that the most common weapons of the day, spears and axes, would be capable of inflicting serious damage through mail. The more we see of mail in practical tests like this, the more its weaknesses against puncture become apparent. I suspect a heavy spear thrust would sail through mail as if it weren't there. It also would be very interesting to see how much blunt force manages to project through mail. Even if an axe couldn't cut through mail, which I doubt it would to any significant extent, I would not want to suffer an axe blow to my forearm, clavicle, elbow, etc. with only mail as my protection.
Great colab!
This was a really great and interesting video. Both of you make great videos on your own, but these colabs takes it to another level.
Thank you very much, and keep up the very good work
Thanks so much
Would it be accurate to say Rondel daggers probably killed more knights than swords once plate armor became available? I have always respected the dagger and considered it to be the unsung hero and the workhorse of melee combat. I love this presentation by two of the most respected authorities on UA-cam for medieval combat.
Possibly, though swords evolved to have very pointy ends (ala rondel daggers). The fighting style then became using a sword as , effectively, a wrestling bar and a dagger in one. So both swords and daggers end up killing in similar ways.
Good longbows, and then crossbows made armour pretty much useless.
@Wiz Rom This really isn't true. Ranged weapons did have a period of extreme dominance over personal armour, but it was much later. Even during the Napoleonics heavy cavalry still wore armour (infamously the French Curassiers).
@@wizrom3046 You might want to watch the videos on this channel about that...
Imagine trying to use a dagger in battle: "Excuse me, low born infantrymen with your long polearms, move aside and watch us knights grapple while you can have your formation battle with your peers. Don't you dare interfere and bash me over the head with that halberd while I role around on the ground trying to slip this thing into my opponent's armpit."
So you've somehow lost your shield or your 2 handed polearm and are now grappling with a dagger while the enemy remains in formation. You have bigger priorities, like running back towards friendly lines to fetch a proper weapon.
A short 1 handed weapon is not a "workhorse". It's a side arm of last resort.
Thank y'all for doing this fascinating test. According to the numbers from The Knight and the Blast Furnace, which are based on drop tests against mild steel plate, piercing 1.2mm mild steel with an arrow point to a depth of 40mm should take around 70-75 J. I believe the arrow point Alan Williams used was 18 degrees, so this dagger's point is probably rather narrower & more efficient at penetrating. Tests of kinetic energy with knife stabs have some figures above 75 J for overarm attacks at table height targets. In that sense, these results are broadly consistent with other tests. However, penetration does look awfully easy here.
The results do raise the question of how mail was a dominant armor for so long, & how various sources mention that mail stopped stabbing attacks. Pietro Monte, for example, recommended doubled mail to protect the throat & neck area of a plate harness. He wrote that points often got through a single layer of mail, but apparently doubled mail provided better protection. Monte wrote in the late 15th century, when many weapons had points similar to this dagger.
I suspect some historical armor was in fact intended mainly to stop weaker or glancing hits rather than providing the near invulnerability that a heavy plate harness of hardened steel offered.
ua-cam.com/video/oNkLWBTowZg/v-deo.html
I think you may be overlooking the role of momentum here. 75J is one thing, but the difference between it being delivered by an 80g arrow vs a 6kg arm or indeed a whole torso of weight makes for a very different action
@@tods_workshop I'm curious to see how attending to momentum & other factors may enrich existing models for assessing & understanding armor. Neither The Knight and the Blast Furnace nor the drop tests for modern stab-resistant armor that Alan Williams followed use momentum as the relevant measure. Instead, they use kinetic energy. Stab vests have ratings in joules. Dropping a point with a weight behind it does differ in various ways from shooting an arrow or striking or pushing with knife/dagger. The advantage of focusing on KE is that is relatively easy to measure (especially for projectiles), but it may not tell the whole story.
@@tods_workshop the mention of momentum doesn't track in your's and B.H comments. Could you elaborate?
When I think of momentum I'm thinking of mass with movement. That IS kinetic energy, E=mc^2
So 75J from an arrow is an arrow moving much faster than 75J from an arm.
The difference would be that Energy per unit area would be a lot smaller for an arrow than a fist, when considering penetrative power.
What am I missing?
OP seems to simply be saying that other tests also found that mild steel could be penetrated with a knife. And that the better geometry of the rondel is making it even easier than in the referenced test. So your tests are consistent with other independent testing. That's a good thing.
@@erithanis A bit late but if you are still wandering, momentum is mass times velocity, so when you have a heavier object with the same mass of the ligher object it will have more momentum, it is more related to the amount of movement a body have. Basically, given that the same force is applied in two objects with different mass and same energy, you will need to apply this force for a longer time in the heavier object, so it`s harder in this sense to stop this object.
Always a pleasure gentleman. Thank you for your time. Cheers
Really enjoyed these three videos on the rondel dagger! Thanks Tod and Matt for doing these tests! It’s a little hard for people like me to do myself so I’m glad that there are people who can!
I love the collaborations with Matt.
I assume the age of maille had a simple solution to maille, in spears, but also had a simple defense in shields.
Also, if plated armour wasn't a big thing, I wonder if gauntlets weren't common, and if so then slashing weapons targeting extremities could have been extremely effective
The solution to armor during that period was simple to hit people where they're not armored. Full coverage wasn't really thing. And most combatants were unarmored anyway.
@@majungasaurusaaaa depends on the period, not sure which u r talking about
Great job guys!
I think to add nuance to Tod's 'Arms Race' comment, the Rondel dagger came into prominence as plate evolved to such a degree of specialization that it was critical!
I'm sure armored knights would rather not roll about wrestling in the mud but once their traditional mounted & side arms were lost or broken - Tah-Dah!
Much as the early advent of modern armor only necessitated such counters as the .50 cal Browning machine-gun & Boy's Anti-tank rifles with armor piercing ammunition to defeat WW Once era & even the early Panzer 1 & 2 tanks, once tank development increased armor .50 cal/14.5mm rifles couldn't hack it.
Thus the larger cannon armor piercing rounds, squash head (HESH) & shaped charge Anti-Tank (HEAT) became necessary. The average Infantry unit required dedicated-ish Anti-Tank guns like the 37mm & 57mm & the Bazooka & PIAT had to come on line...
Because the armor was past the ability of the Anti-Armor weapons of the prior generation.
Since mail doesn't possess the structural rigidity to disperse a blow as plate does, most weapons of previous generations could still deliver blows adequate to breaking down the warrior within. A hard enough blow to break an arm, collar bone, ribs etc - through mail would be distributed over a greater surface area on the body on the plate armored knight by the very nature of the plate's rigidity.
No sharply focused point of impact transmission into the encased warrior means - ya gotta go to the soft spots & the shorter & stiffer the blade you wield to get into them, the better the effectiveness you can expect.
Think discarding Sabot Armor piercing ammo - in a handheld package.
If a knight has been unhorsed and has lost most of his arms and is somehow down to a dagger his priorities would be survival ie running back towards friendly lines to fetch a proper weapon. Grappling is not conducive to that. It's the opposite of disengaging and escaping.
That was very impressive. What a fearsome weapon. I can see your sales going up after this! As Matt has pointed out in previous videos in the age of mail the penetrating role that rondel daggers fulfill would be taken by spears.
did they use thin narrow spear blades like that rondel dagger? that thing on the end of spear shaft would be scary.
@@MusMasi Some angons have a similar edge geometry to some rondel daggers. And many of the late medieval polearms of course. But most of those narrow spearpoints I have seen are square in cross section unlike this dagger.
The two of you are great together.
Thanks we enjoy it
What Tod said 🙂
I love how Tod pushed on it, the same method can be seen in illustrations in La fleur des histoires de Jean Mansel TOME 2 - from around the 1470s by an man at arms with an equally large dagger how has put himself on top of an armored opponent and put the point to the neck area
Thanks - I was unaware of that
love these experimental archeology videos
On why we don't see these in the age of mail.
First possible culprit is how widespread a piece of armor is - there is little point in making a specialized weapon against one guy out of a hundred, and you do see some early medieval soldiers with just helmet and a shield for defense. By the time late medieval period begins, absolutely everyone has some sort of armor, at least a gambeson, usually some chain mail as well and you start to see poor soldiers with partial plates. There are even records of absolutely dirt-poor last minute conscripts using straw soaked in tar as an improvised gambeson. A related point to this is that earlier chain mail armor sets don't necessarily cover that much of you (short sleeves, no coifs, etc), so you have the option of aiming for the gaps instead of trying to go through.
Second possible culprit - well, you need to stab the chain mail with a seax and/or quillon dagger. I suspect that thrusts by these will be able to go through, even if they don't have the absolute best blade for it, but have a lot more trouble with plate.
Other daggers could have been fine at it? Spears, hammers, axes, swords etc give more range.
Until plate made simple percussion less effective, the dagger as the tertiary weapon may not have had much thought.
Agreed, along with two other thoughts.
With the quality of the metallurgy improving - when your thin rings start getting made of better, tougher steel your old daggers and sword shapes probably start to struggle rather more to get through sufficently, creating the requirement to change the weapon.
There is also the usefulness as a tool - your leaf blade dagger can be used as needed around camp, around the dinner table, to skin and butcher as well as on the battlefield, the longer swords reasonably functional as a machete to clear brush - this very strong triangular spike profile is pretty much hopeless at anything but killing through armor - nobody wants to carry an extra 1Kg if they don't get anything for it, so while your more versatile blade forms are functional enough on the battle field there isn't a great need to change.
This was fun, these two are natural teammates for these kinds of inquiries. Just need Toby and an archer for a full team. Let’s test some spears against armor, and daggers against the full suit like the arrows were. Great job guys.
I do like these Matt n Todd videos. These guys make a right good team. Matt N Todd's Medieval Mania.
"Why weren't rondel daggers around earlier?"
Perhaps the answer is that they absolutely were, we just don't have evidence for it since any tapestry or manual depicting them has been lost. In Fiore's books, circa 1410, there is already a developed and sophisticated system of the use of rondels, so presumably the weapons were already well-established and ubiquitous by then. The only manual we have older than that is the I.33, and that's exclusively for sword and buckler, so it's probably a reasonable assumption to make that rondels (or similar weapons) are much older than the available physical evidence for them.
Always here to see Matt stab Tod's stuff with his big imposing dagger ;)
Ooh missus!
Great vid, always find myself liking Tod and Matts videos before watching. Hope Tod planning more of these from manufacture to test.
I love your combo vids- design meets application. I was very surprised at the significance of penetration through both forms of armor. I expected near complete protection.
Neat! The dagger was more effective than I thought it would be, especially against the thick multilayered linen.
When you were pushing that dagger against the steel plate I was sweating so much... imagine it slipping and suddenly you have it in your leg 😰
I love your channel. My wife interned at The Royal Armouries when it was in the Tower of London in the 90s before they moved the majority of the collection to Leeds and this kind of stuff always interested me. We got private tours at both the Tower from head curator and from the staff at Royal Armouries in Leeds about 15 years ago.
Awesome video man. Im shocked at how easily the maille was defeated. I guess we now know why some ppl wore a second layer over certain vital areas. I would have loved to see you try to make it through the plate with the maille and then the gambeson beneath it. Or with the maille doubled over. I can understand why you didn't if you didn't want to damage the dagger though.
Always wondered if after all the stabby stab, the pork made a good roast. Great video.
It's great to see the two of you having such a good time. And educating us along the way. With regards to why the dagger took so long to appear, could it be to do with the presence of shields? That dagger seemed notably bad at penetrating wood.
That was my thought, too. The rondel dagger may have had to wait for shields to become much less commonplace before its development could really take off.
@@khublaklonk4480 that is a good point and keeping mind shields were pretty big for the time period where mail was the main form of high end armour so you might have had trouble to reach around and stab an opponent with the dagger.
Maybe daggers were around and simply not documented, discovered or were reused for a long, long time.
This was really interesting, thanks guys.
Tod, based on the fact you had to sharpen the dagger after a few maile strikes...I'd like to have you do a tutorial on your sharpening techniques, and actually show how you do it on different edge types(i.e. knives, daggers, tomahawks, axes, and swords)
Always great to see more testing. Hard to beat experimental archaeology.
I wonder what the effect of angles on the chain mail and gamberson is. I suspect that in a real fight the weak points in plate would often be in spots that are harder to get a straight thrust at, like the arm pits, and where the person wearing the armour will be trying to turn and such to reduce penetration, at least if they are standing.
Love it when these guys film together. So much fun.
Tod i have a idea for why the edge alignment is not indexed to the handle and maybe it is something you could test. I think that the edge is indexed 90 degrees from the handle so that it can also be used to defend and block attacks without taking damage to the edge so that it will not reduce its ability to penetrate armor.
Always excited for these collabs, especially for something so 'cutting edge' as these tests. Bravo.
It would be interesting trying this with armor moving like your in battle and actually moving. Side way motion compared to dagger might increase friction and change angle it hitting at lowering penetration but also might make wound bigger?
Good question - my guess would be that the fabric and mail would still penetrate but the plate would glance off.
Glancing off might still be deadly because you might slide sideways to a gap in the plate.
Always a great video with Matt!
I know you said you didn't want to, but if would be great to see this against a proper breast plate. Given the 200lb war bow struggled to pierce from a fairly close distance it'd be insane if this made it through relatively easily. Maybe one day!
After seeing this video I wouldn't be surprised if the dagger did pierce the breast plate but I don't think it would go very deep.
I don't think you'd get through a shaped breastplate made of the appropriate thickness and type of steel with a dagger. A lot of this is about whether or not the tip "grips" before it slips off. I'm certain that a bodkin from even a modestly powerful bow would go straight through this 1.2 mm mild steel... this is more representative of the thinner bits of armour on limbs or articulated to cover the groin or joints than it is the main plates.
@@chemistrykrang8065 Most breastplates in the late 14th through the 15th centuries were made out of wrought iron with a fairly high slag content. Their generally high slag, sulfur and phosphorus content made them mechanically more like cast iron. Modern medium carbon steel is superior to all but the very best steels that were used to make breastplates and other armours during the late medieval period. Only something like 5% of men in plate armour on the late medieval European battlefield would have had breastplates as good or better than the one Tod tested. If Tod's armourer had recreated the original breastplate his replica was patterned on perfectly, because of its unusually high carbon content and above average thickness, it still would have been better than ~85% of late medieval breastplates.
@@Marmocet It's definitely true that armour quality would be very variable, and I think it's reasonable to argue that the breastplate used in the archery tests by Tod represents the better end of that spectrum... but also that rich folks intending to go do stuff that would entail having arrows shot at them would probably be trying to get that quality and could afford it.
Honestly I think the rondel dagger would probably struggle with 3 mm of curved (i.e. shaped like a breastplate) mild steel too to be honest. Hardness does definitely make a huge difference but given the relatively low mass and momentum of a dagger (vs a polearm etc) I think a bit of a curve and some extra thickness would help a lot.
@Chemistry Krang I should have added that what I said was based heavily on the survey and metalurgical analyses of medieval armour conducted by Alan Williams in _The Knight and the Blast Furnace._ Williams' work actually lets us put some figures on this subject.
Based on Williams' work, we can estimate that the median (50th percentile) fracture toughness of late medieval armour was ~180 kJ/m^2. The fracture toughness of pure wrought iron (iron without slag or other impurities) is ~200 kJ/m^2, so the metal used to make half of late medieval armour wasn't even as tough as pure wrought iron. This is because medieval iron and steel typically contained large amounts of slag, sulfur and phosphorus. Pure wrought iron was tougher than ~63% of late medieval armour metal.
Modern 1005 steel, the grade of steel with the lowest carbon content you can typically get today, has an average carbon content of 0.05%. Modern 1005 steel contains manganese, something that medieval iron and steel did not. Because of its manganese content, 1oo5 steel has an equivalent carbon percentage of 0.12%. Its average fracture toughness is ~220 kJ/m^2. It is tougher than ~74% of medieval armour. Modern 1020 steel, which is probably what Tod used in this test, has an average carbon equivalent of 0.28% and an average fracture toughness of 250 kJ/m^2, making it tougher than ~83% of medieval steel.
The replica breastplate in Tod's "arrows versus armour" test was based on the Churburg 14 breastplate. The Churburg 14 breastplate's average carbon content is ~0.6%. Its slag content was not tested, but Italian armour of that period typically contained 1-2% slag, so the original breastplate's fracture toughness is probably 240-255 kJ/m^2, making it tougher than 80-85% of late medieval armour. At 2.5 mm at its thickest point, it was also ~14-19% thicker than the median breastplate of its period, so it would take ~75% more energy per unit area to pierce it than a late medieval median quality, median thickness breastplate of the same design. The original was not an average quality breastplate, as Tod's armourer suggested. In its day, that breastplate was close to top tier quality.
The replica of the Churburg 14 breastplate Tod used was made of modern 1050 steel, which has an average carbon equivalent of 0.635% and an average fracture toughness of 320 kJ/m^2. That is tougher than ~94% of late medieval armour metal. Combined with the breastplate's above average thickness, it would take *~226% more energy per unit area* to pierce it than it would to pierce a breastplate of the same design of late medieval median quality and median thickness. It would be seriously in error to form your expectations about what would typically happen to armour when shot/stabbed/struck on the basis of Tod's test. A breastplate of the quality Tod tested would have been rare, not typical.
Wonderful science being done Tod. I really didnt think the rondal dagger would penetrate so deep on the plate steel. My eyes have been opened. Thanks for the film.
For the pushing with both hands, Tod's version against the plate may not be entirely unrepresentative: Let's not forget that you would be wearing all your armour and pushing down with a lot of extra mass.
The mass of your armour, your body weight and a shit ton of adrenaline behind it all. Would go through easily.
Scary how effective that turned out to be! Even if you speculate that you'd only get a quarter as much penetration against an armoured and manoeuvering opponent that's still going to hurt!
Rondels probably didn't exist before the advent of 'full' plate armour because 1. Shields 2. A spear is superior in that context. If you look at spearheads from the time where maille was the primary defence you will find many with not dissimilar sections to Rondels...*I really like you did the Rondel in bloomery steel, lovely*
I really enjoyed this trilogy of films. It tickled three different parts of my brain with the crafting, history, and mechanical testing centered around this one representation of an historical object.
Thanks and that was the plan, to look at the same object from three different directions
Tod when would arrows vs armour 2 be released
Still in the edit - about a month I think
Great ad, I’m glad I already have a Tod Rondel the price should go up now!
“Rondel Dagger - does exactly what it says TO the tin.”
Did the gauntlet help keep the dagger on a more perpendicular angle after contact?
At the end I was expecting a bit of John Wick hammering on the pommel to get extra penetration.
Thanks for dedicating precious time into world changing innovation
One thing regarding mail:
In the age of mail, the mail armour was pretty much never made from uniform rings - they would very in size and thickness quite heavily, being large and thick on the torso, getting progressively smaller along the arms and legs, and the smallest and thinnest at the joints. I have seen an original, although it was a later piece - late 16th or 17th century Polish or Hungarian cavalry mail armour - which had the exact properties I've described, and the thickest rings looked pretty damn thick and sturdy to me. If earlier medieval pieces were made similarly, they would've been quite resilient against stabs.
Although a dagger like this would fair remarkably well against thinner parts of the mail (as we have just seen, thank you both, gentlemen!) I'm sceptical if it would penetrate the thicker parts of the armour. One more study to be made, i guess.
Yes. We shouldn't take the mail tested here as representative of all historical mail. However, we have long known that historical manuals instruct stabbing at areas of a plate harness covered with mail gussets. So it's perfectly expected for a dagger designed for armored fighting to be able to defeat the sort of mail worn over the armpits.
@@b.h.abbott-motley2427 By all means yes, I am aware. I was referring to the discussion on why there wasn't many anti-mail daggers/swords in the age of mail - maybe the rarity and elite status of mail, as well as the construction of the rings on the majority of the body, possibly combined with how the martial arts systems worked at the time (as far as I know we know very little on how people fought at the time, but I assume there were systems which simply were not preserved in a manual, like in later periods) made the thrusts less reliable on a battlefield and civilian settings than the cuts? How relevant my observation may be is up for debate, but than again, that's why I've posted this here - to provoke a discussion, so thanks for the answer.
Man, I'm stoked for the reworked armour tests. These little teases......
I am impressed! I knew the use of the rondel, but always assumed that it was only marginally more capable of piercing armor than other weapons, I never expected it to pop mail quite so easily, and I am absolutely amazed it can be simply pressed through a sheet of steel.
Wow this was a real eye opener. Was absolutely convinced it would have zero effect on the plate. Quite a game changer. Great job guys
I literally yelled "WHAT?!?!?!?!?!" at my screen like, 4 times during this video. Fantastic stuff guys! Thanks for doing the experiments for us! :D
There is something particular striking about how the rondel just slides right in from the push. Something about that feels more violent and grim than the stab proper. The SOUND it makes, and the way Easton just leans into it.
Knife fighting is kinda terrifying, actually.
I wonder if the Rondel wasn't used as more of a prop. Not to say it wasn't effective, but in a real life or death battle, plenty of things can cause horrific injury to armored opponents. Even your gauntleted fist could do in a pinch.
However if you want someone to yield, without you injuring them, then the Rondel is incredible. And maybe that's the difference?
Maybe it took until that late medieval period before Hostage taking was a big enough industry that Knights wanted a weapon that could pull double duty; both as an actual backup weapon against armor, and as a weapon you could use to hold someone up at knife-point even if they were armored.
This is awesome research. Thank you. Planning to pick up one of your daggers (not a Rondel though) in a week or so.
I loved this video. Such a brilliant range of insights regarding the potential usage and effectiveness of the rondel dagger. Really made me want one!
amazing video series start to finish, thanks for all the time and effort!
Regarding the discussion about why these daggers weren't used before plate armor in history; I think they used short spears instead, perhaps custom edge for chainmail.
I love that you give the measures in inch AND mm, thank you for that and not forgetting there are different measurement-systems in the world ;-)
It's always going to be a great video when Matt & Tod are together!! 👍👍
Extremely impressed by the strength of this dagger, not only is it a beautifully crafted it's also tough as nails!
Tod, you are a treasure. Everybody knew what rondel daggers are for, you test it anyway; and lo and behold: we all learned something. Great work.
always a good day to see a new video of you 2 collaborating. ( my jaw literally dropped seeing how easy the dagger went through the plate )
This was so fascinating . Thank you to everyone involved.