Pole hammer vs historical accurate armor (lucerne hammer | falcons beak | bec de corbin | poleaxe) 

I hope the weapontest surprised you. If you are interested in save training weapons made from rubber and hard plastic, here are the links: dominusgladius.com/drevkova-zbroia/534/ dominusgladius.com/drevkova-zbroia/537/

This is definitely Dequitem, an armored fighter in non-choreographed knight fights like these:

Ever since I read The Deeds of Jacques de Lalaing and Le Jeu de la Hache I was preaching that poleaxes/polehammers weren't meant for armour penetration or repeated bashing, since that would give little to no results. Jacques mostly used it as a spear to aim for the gaps, only occasionally using it as a hammer when he could deliver a very powerful blow, but never once he tried to penetrate armor, supposedly because he knew it would be fruitless.

1:03 bro was sent to sleep here.

"Don't kill your friends." Excellent advice! 😂 Great video as always!

Love it how realistic your fights are portrayed. Plain and simple. No fancy shit.

I am glad to see you show the test vs maille armour. I think the hammer is still anti-armour, its just plate armour is anti-anti-armour

Hey those look pauldrons look familiar!! Haha, great test and analysis my friend.

This is really interesting. The falcons beak under performed to my expectations. 🤔

I feel like we have seen a few tests like this against plate armor, and in most cases the plate (even if largely unhardened iron-alloys) provides sufficient protection that a human (or analog) would be largely uninjured from the weapon systems and/or circumstantial parameters of the testing. Additionally, most of these armor tests are setup to favor the weapon over the armored target (i.e. the armor being tested has fewer glancing blows do to the target being stationary and less yielding than human combatants), and yet we still see very few instances where a plate has been penetrated deeply enough to give consequential battlefield injury. I think a poleaxe/polehammer is still an optimal weapon for foot combat in plated harness, but that has more to do with the overall toolset and mechanical advantage such weapons offer.

truly an unfortunate outcome, i really thought it would go through the helmet! lucerne hammer will still be my favorite polearm though, such an awesome piece of history. thanks for everything you do dequitem

Great job! I like how you are demonstrating how resistant plate armor is, dispelling some of the myths surrounding the supposed anti armor weapons. I also love the fact that you are testing the weapons in full contact sparring and not just theoretically study them. When it comes to the pollaxe though, while a lot of historical examples were dull I am not entirely convinced they were not sharpened. A sharp pollaxe would be very useful against opponents who were not fully armored, since chopping into those unarmored parts would be fight ending compared to trying to smash the armor, of which you have the hammer available.

As a reenactment participant. I truly enjoy your descriptions, discussions and exhibitions. Thank you. Keep it coming please.

Most curious to me was learning that most heavily armored duels ended in grappling and wrestling. I of course knew that was a common end point, but I really had no idea it was so prevalent. I was aware that the end almost always came when the villain was on the ground.

Your videos are some of the most informative on armored fighting!

Love your non-choregraphed fighting and the knowledge you bring. Great video.

That's a truly fearsome weapon! Great video as always.

Tolle Doku...mit stimmungsvollen Kampfbeispielen...Wie immer...hohe Qualität und supi Optik...Danke!!!

This is a well shot video. Great job with the explanation and demonstration.

Wow your channel has grown a lot! I've been watching you on and off for a long while now and these videos are just awesome. Glad to see you doing well!

man I love these videos, very rare genera of content which I've searched for over many years

The main spike could be used to easily penetrate even the best mail. I believe that is exactly what it was designed to do. Nothing besides a good gun could reliably be used to penetrate quality plate armor in the late mideval period. That is why specialized weapons were adopted to exploit the armors only weakness, which was the gaps usually covered by mail.

Awesome video mate. Thanks for taking the time to make this. G'day from Australia.

Awesome production as always

Great video! Thank you for doing these tests

Thanks for your insight, very interesting test and video!

Bravo! Finally! This is the video the internet needed!! Love it!

thanks for showing Lucy some love! i feel like the Lucerne is often under represented in a lot of media. Which is a shame because it's such a cool weapon.

Thanks for doing the chain mail tests, the plate armor is the pinnacle, but chain and padding is the every man's armor. This weapon is absolutely badass.

I like the filter you used for the video. Makes it look like a painting

Absolutely awesome im about to binge watch now

Thank you very much for testing diffrent quality material. i was commenting about that in a previous video of yours so im genuinely thankful beeing able to see that. i can imagine that people in the past didnt know how to overcome amor either. weapons like poleaxes and so forth where just the best bet. this is why grapling, ending it dirty on the ground is described to often. i wonder how much % did have plate on an historical battlefield

Stuff like this is the most effective weapon to fight someone who has made by wearing armor most weapons ineffective against them. The point of armor is to make weapons less effective against the wearer, that is why the owners invested large fortunes to get them and wear them. People think that armor can be just negated, but in practice the most you can do is try to get around it and that is where these come in.

The forest setting adds great atmosphere to your presentation.

Very informal. I had not considered that a spike may be better at transferring blunt force trauma through armor, if it settles within it. Even if it does not penetrate deeply, it must be a nasty hit.

Okay but what's the best Ash of War to use on it?

So I think what can be taken away from this is that with the increased use of metal in armor, for instance, covering joints in 16th century armor, that the hammer could have been used more to lock up and disrupt the joints making it harder for one to react. If we look at the evolution of armor and how it moved to cover both more vulnerable spots and tie downs, that means weapons were utilized to take advantage of these openings.

Uh I am really excited about this video. I bet I will see some correction in terms of how "Anti-Armor"-Weapon it is. I presume it will not be Armor piercing, but rather be Pain-under-Armor-bringing. Let's have a watch... Great video! Thank you for making this. I mostly thought the Beak is used for opponents with gambesons or Mail and the other Pieces are for letting the Knight go KO or get stabbed in the gaps of the armor. I really like your take on that matter. Your videos are awesome, especially your camera and open fighting. You are not only speaking theoretically, you also go on practical with your equipment against a resisting Partner.

First time here. I've immediately recognized your German accent 🥰. Based channel! I subbed.

Mal wieder ein schönes Video.

Hello again! Loved the video, covered a lot of things I was wondering about the weapons. I had a suggestion for a video, that being an overall idea of how one grapples while in a harness. Most of your fights all end with grappling and stabbing for gaps, and I was wondering if you could shed more light on that.

any puncture wound deeper than 2 inches can be mortal, a spike like that of your Warhammer, can sever any mayor vein or artery, the narrow spike stab will provoke internal bleed on top of a potentially bone breaking contusion, if received on the viscera it can reduce organ function, kinetic force can shred organs like the liver, kidneys and brain, without any puncture. I'd like to see how well it does poking metal, chainmail and gambeson all together. Also, have you heard about partially reinforced plating? something like armor thicker in certain point's to protect the viscera? it was used at all? if so, was it successful? is that level of craftsmanship only attainable to the nobles? I'm not quite as versed in this topics as you sir. GReat content! btw greetings from Colombia (America)

Always fascinating

Great stuff!

Fiore de'i Liberi's treatise does indicate that a single powerful blow to the helmet from a pollaxe could kill or incapacitate. Doing so wouldn't require penetrating armor. & a test of a historical halberd against a historical munitions-grade harness achieved penetration of the helmet by striking with the halberd's beak. So spikes & beaks could pierce plate armor at times, depending on the wielder & the armor in question.

Thank you so much for this video! You had teased it in comments before, but it's even better than I was expecting. If you managed to get your opponent on the ground, would you try penetrating gaps with the queue/buttspike or another part of the polehammer, or would you prefer mounting with a rondel dagger?

The images from Hans Talhoffer's manuscripts are absolutely showing techniques for an armored duel with unarmored figures. In the personal manuscript (1459), the figures randomly lose their armor in the middle of the armored-duel section but keep using armored techniques. Pollaxes of whatever variety are quite functional for unarmored fighting, however. They're not the best, but many halberds had similar basic stats & a halberd is quite potent in an unarmored duel or skirmish even if it's inferior to a spear.

Not surprised there was little to no penetration on the plate armor on these tests (armor works!) but I'm very curious what that kind of damage would look like to the people on the other side. Broken bones, broken necks, brusing, being knocked around, etc. Time to fund a ballistic gel head for Dequitem!

Какой молодец спасибо за то что объяснил

That was a super interesting and informative video. 👍 Seems like most weapons used in armoured combat were designed to knock the opponent to the ground, rather than cutting through the armour. And in the case of a pole hammer/axe, use the spike to punch through the chain. 🤔

Great work man ❤

Great video :)

It’s a lot lighter than I expected!

I think its good to make sure armor in an armor test is on something with some, but not too much, give, to simulate that a body wearing it also has some give. it has some weight, but isn’t fastened solid to spot in space so that all the energy goes strait into the material at one point, but instead, some of it is dissipated by the body moving a bit with the blow is struck.

Another amazing video from Dequitem. Made my day.

Just found your channel through shorts, i love the combat you do. Are you german ?

WOW ! YOU ARE VICIOUS!

Enjoyed that thanks

I will get one of these bad boys soon. Love them

I'm a simple man. I saw a guy in a full suit of armor holding a warhammer and I hit like.

hey the quality is unreal!! would you mind naming the Camera Setup?

great video

I'm very glad that in the sphere of historical arms, this complex and intriguing area of historical sciences, there is always place for both researching the in-depth documents and hitting stuff (as well as, in a safe manner, people) with large spiky objects. Btw, I was wondering if the tassets (don't know if that is the correct term, I mean the metal skirt) of your armor are based on any historical examples. The somewhat angular shape looks cool, I just want to see more.

Always loved the bec de Corbin, used it in a Warnanlage mod a while back, always thought it was sick.

The spike on the pole hammer is not for trying to penetrate plate armor but for tripping and "scratching" and backslashing tendons, legs, arms necks and so on. Same for the axe of pole axe - the axe head has the same usage. U can use it as and axe but also as the beak. Same for the halberds - not primarily used for chopping but for backslashing after thrust and tripping your opponent. The main striking part of these weapons is the hammer head.

I am no professional at all.. not even an amateur.. Just the typical random internet guy. However, when i would have to think about how this tool was used I'd go towards finding gaps in an armor. Further I think that in case your oponent is using sword and shield you'd have a massive advantage in reach and leverage. Keeping the enemy from you while being able to "pull" the shield away with the beak and then going forward to penetrate the gaps in the armor (under the arms or maybe between helmet and breastplate) with the speared front. The hammer part? I have no clue at all.. maybe for lesser armored foes to deliver more blunt force trauma to the head? Anyways, great Video! Subbed! :D

very cool man very cool

Great video as always! I would love to know who made this beautiful hammer?

Hey @Dequitem have you ever tested work-hardened mild steel armor? A while back Tod and Matt Easton did that test with a rondel dagger against raw sheet metal and they got significant penetration. The thing is, plain mild sheet is usually softened from the factory to make it easier to work with. I'd be really interested to see if shaped and work-hardened mild steel would be enough to change those results

Another excellent video! The name literally means "beak of the raven" or, raven's beak/ravensbeak.

That weapon has "deadly" written all over it😮. Nonstop action all over 1's face. Very powerful battle's 👍💯💙❕❕❕

Astonished at how well the armor did; I guessed it would be opened right up.

Great video as always. Who made your polehammer?

Great historical weapons and armor impressive to see strength of modern smithing.

Although you guys should always keep in mind that your armor is much thicker and more uniform than the historical quality, potentially higher metallurgic quality too if high carbon. Limb defenses could be quite thin and much more susceptible to serious damage from very fine points concentrating impact energy, or just heavy blunt impacts on the hand/back of the head, etc.

Really nice video. But is longsword better than shorten poleaxe or they are matched? It's a bit unclear

Your English is much better than my German, so please understand that I offer a correction only to help you. Hardened is pronounced "har-dend". the "-ed" at the end is pronounced as a "d". As with many other words in English that end in "ed", there is only a "d" or "t" sound, because unlike German, nothing is pronounced as it is spelled. Thanks for the content.

Im seriously considering buying a bec de faucon, what brand would you say makes the best inexpensive ones?

Fascinating! Maybe a small hole would be enough to be able to hook your opponent off balance? Edit: i should have waited a bit longer when he addresses that idea.

Another great video. Do you think that in pre-plate times, assuming you would not use lamellar / scale / splint or smaller plates over mail shirt, could mail protect center of mass (lets say chest) from piercing attacks if it was made in similiar fashion as the mail that was used in later periods for the aventail / neck area. Recently I saw a good evidence (Fateful Force archery videos) that bodkin arrow with 40-50 joules (45-70 lb bow, depending on type and draw length - basically entry level warbow or even hunting bow) could penetrate decent quality riveted mail based on mail armors from plate armor era. I am trying to find some logical reason why bows did not dominate battlefield in Europe in pre-plate middle ages because based on what I know they actually did not dominate, but based on evidence they can definitelly penetrate "normal" mail and in many parts of Europe lamellar / scale / etc was not that common so how was melee infantry and cavalry (let alone shock infantry) so dominant in the "mail period" when bows seem to defeat it so easily? I know shields existed, but arrows can penetrate them to the point where they hit the arm or other body part of the wearer. Any ideas?

Knights are so god damn cool. Can't wait to finish my suit of armor.

You talk about when a penetrating weapon would injure or kill. Could you explain the general threshold for a lethal hit or a wounding hit with various weapons? PS your hair is majestic. PPS, what are the advantages or flaws of fluted armor versus regular armor?

With your comment about hooking things with the axe head, couldn't you also hook things with the beak? Or would that be less practical since the beak historically was smaller?

Those hits to the head look strong.

Crazy you could beat that plate all day and just give them a bruise. But any kids Glock will go straight through it. For its day plate armor was such a cheat code for the rich and royal.

great locations

Poleaxe or polehammer seems like a great choice for a strong knight who knows he is not that good at wrestling. One accurate or lucky blow to the head has the potential to knock down the opponent, and you can get your ransom or win the duel.

Did you commission the polehammer from somebody? It looks awesome

AWESOME VIDEO ! Its amazing how tough the medieval armour was ! No wonder one full plated knight on horseback could fight few dozen peasants with pitchforks wearing only gambeson type cloth armour ...

@1:08 Holy crap! That hit to the head screamed "Concussion!" Hope that guy was ok.

Do you guys have a knight program i can join? I want to make and wear armor, weapons.

Awesome video. Just a tip; ‘Hardened’ is pronounced ‘har-dund’ (2 syllables) and not ‘har-dun-nid’. Same with ‘shortened’ (pronounced ‘shor-tund’, with 2 syllables). Keep up the good work!

it doesn't necessarily seem to be worth the effort to use as anti armor, because even if you go through, you're really only going through a few centimetres and there might be plate and/or Gambeson beneath that so how much are you really penetrating or causing harm?

I do question the validity of the penetration depths in the mail test, as you are swinging into wood as opposed to flesh.

I mean given that these strikes were to the shoulder i suspect that if you hit at that angle a few times no penetration would be needed to render the user permanently crippled lol I may be in a bit of a bubble but I didn't know people expected the plates, especially of a higher quality (and as we know from the findings a ton of stuff was well below what we consider hardened these days), would be pierced by these. It even just *looks* purpose meant to break maille. In fact we still use tools shaped like this beak to break welded chains lmao

What size are the rings on the chain mail, to avoid the thrusts with the black weapons?

How do you ensure that your thrusting attacks to the neck, don’t slide between padding and cause serious injury?

Although no Minions were harmed (wasted opportunity) I still have to give this 10/10. 🏆

Where did you get this beautiful reproduction of the polehammer? I mean the metal one

Being on something with flex actually simulates how well it would preform better.