Testing daggers vs historical chainmail

Today we take a look at several pieces of historical chainmail from The Oakeshott Institute Collection as well as a couple of pieces of modern reproduction mail, and reflect on how the diversity of authentic mail influences how we think about weapon vs armor testing. In a recent video we responded to post by Tod (of Tod’s Stuff) and Matt Easton in which they found different results than we did when challenging modern mail with historically accurate rondel daggers. Now, we want to stress that we have big respect for both Matt and Tod, and for their testing videos, which made us really reflect on why we’ve seen different results. We really try to do tests that contribute to our understanding of historical arms and armor rather than just trying to sell our products (which you should totally buy because they are awesome). One of the really interesting things about this whole situation is that two makers of high quality historical reproductions got really different results in similar tests. This begs the question of why... This video is the first of several in which we explore why it is that tests of historical arms vs. armor tests get such divergent results. Check it out!