I know that many of you have read the quip about unrimmed wooden shields being preferred over steel/iron- rimmed shields in John's book and elsewhere,but perhaps you weren't exactly sure why that should be or to what extent it affected swordplay.
We at ARMA VAB did a bit of testing of sharps against an un-rimmed and unpainted shield a couple of weekends ago and the results were pretty convincing.
We set the shield test up as part of another project and allowed room for both lateral and vertical play in the shields support to make for a more accurate measure of how a shield in a mans hand(which has "give" when struck) would interact with the swords being tested. The main purpose of the above test was not to test the unrimmed shield theory per-se'(we were simply testing comparitively the penetration of different swords into the medium),but the lessons learned incidentally warrant a mention of their own I think.
Simply put,we found that an unrimmed laminated ply shield ,well-struck,really hangs onto the offending blade VERY aggressively...WE(sometimes it took more than one of us) literally had to place our feet against the shield and pry and crank on the blades to dislodge them on occasion...and that was with the shield remaining stationary! I couldn't imagine the difficulty involved in retrieving my steel from a shield in the hands of another while his edge is looking to cleave my flesh. I should think a smart fighter with your edge bound would make every effort to torque the shield and keep you in a bind long enough to kill you(a matter of a second perhaps). This is potentially a serious consideration for us as martial artists and none of our current sparring methodologies allow for that possibility(as far as I know).I guess the trick is this;Would a historically-accurately constructed wooden laminated heater-type shield behave the same as one made of modern laminated plywood?Hmmm....
Thoughts?
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