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Giannis K. Hoplite:wr3yeri0 Wrote:Nothing to do with armour,but glued linen was used to make masks for theater. It has been suggested that it was Connolly again that introduced this theory,but in greece there is a long tradition in some places for making masks used in traditional ceremonies with armoured men wearing masks made of glued linen. The tradition has its roots in paganism.
I don't think it might be very relevant to armour though.

Probably not relavent to glued linen either. A case can be made that linen was never used to make these masks at all. They are just as likely to have been a type of "papier mache"

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rocktupac:1cyo9qg9 Wrote:Again, I simply wanted to point out that while many artists will show incredible detail on certain items, such as the interior of a shield, and then leave the surface of armor (of the type IV variety) smooth or without detail such as quilting. And this is true for many artists. If detail is shown on one piece of military equipment (i.e. a shield interior), why not show detail on something else (i.e. the quilting on type IV armor)? If any quilting had actually been visible one would imagine more artists would have drawn it as such.(6.4.2).

So why can't some of these Type IV's be made of leather or hide - perhaps the ones that don't show stitching?

Quote:None are unequivocal, or even good, evidence for the use of linen armour by classical Greek Hoplites.

Quote:One or two are in fact erroneous - Herodotus 1.135 for example makes no reference to linen whatsoever, but simply says that Persians "wear the Egyptian corselet", which is more likely a reference to the scale corselets of the Persians that Herodotus refers to elsewhere.

Quote:Alcaeus and Homer are references to the mythical past of the Trojan War,

Quote:...my point here is that you chose a 1 cm thick number of layers on the basis that this was 'arrow/weapon proof', but that the Greek armourers, like most, constantly strove for lightness etc and that if a piece stopped 75-90% of strikes, that was considered good, and if a new technique or material allowed increased protection at the old thickness, the armourers promptly thinned it, going for lightness rather than increased protection. This is most evident in the evolution of helmets, and possibly, shields.
I understand very well the reasons you chose arrows as your 'yardstick', and have no quibble with that. Can I ask again what energy levels of weapon you were testing your armour against? Obviously, how closely you can replicate ancient contemporary weapons is a key factor in tests of this kind. Were ancient arrow forms ( reed with foreshaft) and heads ( tanged, and trilobate) used, for example, not to mention bows of the appropriate power, or were you limited by availability to modern-type weapons, whose characteristics are of course very different.....

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Matt Lukes:1xh5oyev Wrote:Cool that you've participated in some testing too Scott I'm curious though- did you not encounter the same problem I did with the natural glues? Whether they work or not in ideal form I wouldn't have thought to be terribly significant if there is such seemingly fundamental flaw of protein glues as water solubility. Further to that, was the example you found wearing wasn't uncomfortable, etc., the PVA version or one of the natural glue pieces? And if it was one of the latter, was sweat not a problem afterall?

The glues themselves may be water soluble, and we were worried about this when our initial arrow tests, but when we tested separate patches for their ability to hold together during a simulated rain we were quite surprised with the results. It seems that when a patch of laminated linen, whether glued with rabbit glue, flaxseed glue, or PVA glue (and yes, I realize PVA isn't relevant and there is nothing about it that compares to the ancient world--it was only used in any of the testing for curiosity alone), was completely drenched in an artificial rain and allowed to dry it would retain its bond between the layers. We even experimented around with natural waterproofing agents, although none of the sources name any (again we did this out of curiosity). We used beeswax rubbed on and melted on, lanolin spread on, pitch melted on, a mix of vinegar and salt, and olive oil spread on. They all compared very well and safeguarded the laminated linen patches against degradation from water.

Quote:The armor that we wore was made from PVA glue. Sweat was not a problem, including the time under the hot sun (which I experienced firsthand). I was running, bending down repeatedly, and jumping at times and found the armor to be completely comfortable and maneuverable.

Quote:The references:
Alcaeus (2.19); Cassius Dio (78.7.1-2); 'Chronicle of Lindos' (29, lines 36-39); Cornelius Nepos 'Iphicrates' (1.3-4); Herodotus (2.182; 3.47; possibly 1.135); Homer 'Iliad' (2.529; 2.830); Livy (4.20.1-7; 9.40.3); Pausanias (1.8; 1.21.9; 6.19.7); Pliny 'Natural History' (19.2); Plutarch 'Alexander' (32); Silius Italicus 'Punica' (4.223; 9.586-598); Strabo 'Geography' (3.3.6; 13.1.10); Suetonius (19.1); Xenophon 'Anabasis' (4.7.16; 7.63); Xenophon 'Cyropaedia' (6.4.2).

OK, only 23 individual references and not "two dozen" as I stated earlier, but close enough (24 if you include the reference from Herodotus (1.135) that the linen armor originated in Egypt).

Our work has not been published yet. We hope to have this done very soon, though. In January we will be presenting once again at the annual meeting of the APA/AIA in Anaheim, CA (January 6-9).

Quote:That's surprising considering what happened in my test with real rain. As the very first post states, I got delamination pretty quickly. And my trial with linseed oil provided nearly no protection- not enough to save the sample and only a bit more with beeswax. But then I did leave my test pieces in the rain for I think it was 15 or 20 minutes (I have to re-read that first post), so it was continually exposed to water and humidity the whole time. My patches weren't large- only about 50 cm2, so I now wonder if there's reason to expect water entering the edges would penetrate more- I hadn't considered controlling for that. Still, having worked a good deal with hide glue now, and of course understanding its molecular nature, I certainly know it absorbs water quite quickly, so I'm still surprised that your protein glues didn't. Rabbit glue I thought was actually a somewhat weaker than good bovine, which is what I have, but it's still largely the same collagen-type proteinaceous fiber adhesive so shouldn't behave much differently with respect to solubility- admittedly I've never heard of flax seed glue before, so have no idea about its behavior.

Not to belabor the issue, but since it's central to what I thought was a fatal flaw, just what do you mean by 'thoroughly soaked and allowed to dry'? How long was your sample exposed to the 'rain'? I would expect you checked it before it dried to see if it had absorbed any water since certainly if the glue dries again, it'll be rigid once more- right?

Quote:You could round this list out to an even two dozen by adding Aeneas Tacticus 29.1-4 from earlier in this thread, which is perhaps the only unequivocally Greek mention of linen thorakes in the whole list.

By the way, I will likely be attending the APA/AIA meeting this year, so I hope to be able to attend your presentation and maybe make a little report to post here, if you wouldn't mind.

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Matt Lukes:3fz3bn4t Wrote:Not to belabor the issue, but since it's central to what I thought was a fatal flaw, just what do you mean by 'thoroughly soaked and allowed to dry'? How long was your sample exposed to the 'rain'? I would expect you checked it before it dried to see if it had absorbed any water since certainly if the glue dries again, it'll be rigid once more- right?

Our test patches were 8" x 8" and left for a total of 10 hours in the 'rain' (which was a sprinkler head left on a medium drizzle). The patches were checked at 10 minute intervals for the first hour, then rechecked every hour for the remaining nine hours. The patches were completely soaked through by the rain (i.e. sopping wet to the core), and allowed to dry for an entire day out in the sun. The olive oil covered patch held up very well after a single application of oil. I even held the patch under a faucet of running water turned on high and very little penetrated, but this was a more unscientific test and the results were not documented thoroughly.

Quote:Right, well certainly 10 hours is certainly sufficient time, but if the samples were indeed soaked through, then the glue should have been a gel at that point with little to no adhesive quality left- even a minor flex of the 'armour' should have shown delamination, not to mention the whole thing being gooey and unpleasant to touch on the surface (plus a great medium for mould, fungus and bacteria- being near a body, it'd grow some fun stuff to be sure). Did yours not? Of course once it dries again it's just as it was before it got wet (providing it's not flexed anywhere the layers could come apart), it's the when wet period that seems the troublesome time.

Quote:This is the point I considered the idea pretty much a failure since if even short exposures to rain in a warm environment, which Greece surely is, the glued 'armour' becomes a soft, sticky growth medium for microorganisms; one cloudburst and a hoplite would have to let his armor dry before it was of any use again, no? Adding oil or any other waterproofer adds another layer of complexity and then one has to consider how that might be when worn- armor sufficiently coated with olive oil would also have been nasty to wear I should think.

Quote:How about stiffness-flexibility? Was the tube flexible in bending or stiff,and only the pteryges moving? Differences when wet? When dry,would the shoulder flaps remain straight before fastenning,like shown on the vases? As i understand it,you haven't buit complete thorakes with the natural glues,but what's your estimations?
Khaire
Giannis

Quote:I'm quite surprised Scott- I just don't see how thoroughly saturated protein glue could not be a gel and no longer a functional adhesive- the two are mutually exclusive. Collagen will absorb a huge amount of water, and becomes basically 'Jell-O'- it's how I clean my glue pot: add the same amount of additional water as leftover glue present and it's a rubbery mass in a relatively short time. If your experience was that the glue was still quite functional, it either couldn't have been saturated or something else is going on. With PVA I can understand, but not rabbit glue unless it's very different than bovine hide glue. Now I really want to try this all again to see if I missed something significant...