Depth Charge Disaster! | MythBusters | Season 8 Episode 9 | Full Episode 

I'm actually fairly sure it would work much better than it already did for them if they (or some company) would have made a thick tile/sheet of the fiber & binding stuff they used for paper at the time, instead of making a tile out of relatively thin sheets of paper like they did for this episode, why not just make something half a cm thick? or thicker? Obviously 'paper' like that would take a while to dry & would be even less flexible compared to the folded packages (but they could have accounted for that at the time with better/actual armor designs) but i also feel like it would be more durable if it has more opportunity to disperse energy along the direction of impact? 🤔

I actually think paper armor was usually made by inexperienced craftsmen cause that is it's main advantage. Armies in China were usually professionals though if needed though would marshall peasants as well. I think the paper armor would mainly be used for those peasant soldiers that are not very well trained to fight in heavy armor. Paper was actually used for clothing for quite a while so many would know how to maintain paper armor. However this was usually only done in emercancies when you needed to marshall an army very quickly. Paper armor is much easier to make by unskilled labor and again paper making for clothing and writing was common so you would have plenty of people experienced in it. Since paper armor is essentially disposable and likely won't last more than a single campaign it makes the most sense to use it for temporary soldiers.

What a shame you weren’t a Mythbuster!

Not to mention that even european armor was never wore on its own! There was also garments like a gambson that greatly enchanced the defensive capabilities of the armor

@@franciscol3510 They did seem to have a padded coat underneath, which looks about the right thickness for a medieval European arming coat. No idea how faithful it is to the Chinese equivalent, though.

@@Cahirable Yes but they didn't use it for the testing, which I believe was a great disservice to paper armor. I was also kinda annoyed by the word ''paper armor'' because it felt too reductive but thankfully they cleared it out quickly. Overall I liked this episode a lot but there was a certain lack of expertise on this area

Ah, you're a proctologist?

No, they put them to the test.

No they dont!

Also steel requires access to iron ore, bloomeries and skilled smelters to turn it into iron, skilled blacksmiths to turn that iron into steel plates and then skilled armor makers to turn those steel plates into a full armor set. I think paper armor was used primarily if you had to do a mass recruitment and you needed to make a huge amount of armor very quickly. Paper making was considered a standard household craft as paper was used for clothing quite frequently in addition as a writing material. So you could marshal a huge army of peasants to make armor and then equip them. With metal armor you can't do that. You can't just marshal up blacksmiths, it takes decades of training so you are limited to the ones you have.

"the design allows it to replace only individual tiles that are damaged, instead of replacing the entire armor" - paper, leather and lacquered/waxed steel armor were all made with this design at the same time. It's not unique to paper armor, which was typically only used in urban environments for light use against small weapons but was essentially useless against large weapons in a full blown military battle. They stopped using paper armor and no one else ever used it for an important reason - it was inferior. But paper armor is better than no armor and you make do with what you can to spare resources until conditions improve.

The company is ArmStreet, who are still around today and apparently doing well.

when i was briefly part of a hema group (historical european martial arts) the other members ordered a lot of their amour and weapons from a ukrainian company. they had a lot of good things to say about the quality of their work.

Lamellar armor was also used around early medieval times, and there's a good number of historical reenactors for that time period in Europe. There's a market so business steps up.

And a surprisingly good Tim Gunn impression.

"data" ARE a plural? :D Actually, "data" is a pain-in-the-butt word. Everyone says "data is", and some complain, but everyone also says "social media is", and no one complains. We talk of having "too much data", and no one complains, because "too many data" sounds absurd. IMHO, we should just resign "data" to be considered an uncountable noun that takes singular verbs (like "media" already is). It sounds more natural, because "data" is considered equivalent to the uncountable "information".

Don't forget that data is pronounced data, not data. I hate people who pronounce data wrong. 😂😂😂😂

@@rnts08 Me, too; I particularly used to hate it when people pronounced the Star Trek character Data's name as "Data". Didn't they watch the show?

Credited as ArmStreet, who are still around, still based in Ukraine (with offices around the world) and providing all your LARP-ing and other needs where costumes and armour may be needed, apparently :)

That's like the word "mischievous" for me. It's pronounced "mis-chiv-us" not "mis-chee-vee-us" since the root word is "mischief." You don't pronounce that "mis-cheef" even though it's spelled that way. English is dumb, and I don't speak any other languages 😂

​@@CountPantsulon It's simpler than that - it isn't pronounced "mis-chee-vee-us" because that would require the last five letters to be "v-i-o-u-s".