Traditional Battle Dress

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Vary 'Ornate' and i must say looks to be very Hot under all that.!

Rick G.

Hello Don,

Glad to see you've cracked the code for posting pics and text. Good job.

That's quite a costume. A lot of work there too.

Reminds me of my own shop outfit - now that I wear the weight belt for support most of the time.

I see some big bamboo stalks there as part of the shrine too. A big bigger than my stalks (thank Heaven).

Thanks for posting.

Gary

I do not see how they could deal with wearing this and using a katana. Hornblower is is correct about the heat. I was told that many would not be able to handle that.

My guess is that the majority of the shogunate were a good deal less enthusiastic about warfare in the summer months.

On the hand, if you grew your own mustache, you could save a couple of grams off the total weight.

I guess something was woven into the costume to resist slashing. I'm sure they were well aware of what a sword could slash thru, and heavy cloth wasn't gonna do it. Do you know Don? Perhaps copper wire/plates or even ceramic plates?

Gary

Wish i knew more about it. From what i am told, it was his father,s and no one in the ASU will touch it.

There is an interesting episode of "Mythbusters" where they discuss paper armor, and the suit they used in their tests was made in the old-school Japanese style with overlapping plates of laquered, hand-made, folded, heavy paper. It was amazingly resistant to slashing and stabbing attacks, and even resisted penetration from a blackpowder pistol, just as well as the similar suit of armor made with mild steel plates.

Of course, when they stepped it up to a modern cartridge pistol firing smokeless powder, both of the suits got puntured easily, even though they used a low-power "cowboy load" in .45 Colt

It's probably on the web, somewhere

Interesting.

I suppose, in the Mythbuster tradition, they used a priceless 16th century suit of armor?

I'll bet the trick to the armor is spreading out the energy impact.

Gary

I think there was a disclaimer, something like "No old armor was harmed in the making of this film"...or maybe it was puppies, I can't remember exactly. It looked like they had identical modern versions ginned up by an enthusiast (read geek), since the point of the show was to compare the paper armor the the metal plate armor. If anything, the sword he used to hack and stab was probably the more authentic ancient article.

The stuff was surprisingly tough, amazingly so in the case of the paper. That said, I'm still not so sure I'd want to test it out myself with one of Garys higher power models. Any model actually, since smaller calibers with round ball sometimes give surprisingly good penetration, all out of proportion with their overall power level.

Yeah ... I recall once deciding to shoot a small FT rifle I'd made, here in the yard. .177" caliber. I set out a Rubbermaid trashcan lid of that tough Rhino plastic behind something else that I'd thought should really be enough by itself. I shot and THWACK!! That sounded like wood! Again ... THWACK!!! Pellet was going thru everything AND the cedar fence far behind.

I have some very very heavy fatigue mats - like almost 1/2" thick. Not the new spongy kind I use in the shop - these were like a heavy truck mud flap. Pellet went right thru when testing the orig. Chameleon. Doubled - it did the same.

Those little dome head pellets at about 25 fpe are hard to stop.

Now ... those 58 caliber 450 grain slugs ... heck ... you can stop those with a couple of buffalo.

Gary

Wonder if one of the old air rifle,s would penetrate???????

I suspect it would leave a nasty mark! hahah.

Sure - I'll bet some would easily. Of course, the trick is to catch the projectile in a web that will then stretch and give and use up all of the energy before it penetrates. I'm sure that is why this suit was bulky.

Gary