Greek / Roman Tasset (waist) Armor is it effective?

And I'm here to talk about tacit armor. And as you can see, I'm wearing a breastplate. It's around a 15th-century breastplate. And I have a tacit. This actually gives its articulated plate. And that's what most people think of when they think of tacit armor. But the kind of tacit armor we're speaking of today is not late-century white tacit armor. We're speaking of the earliest form of tacit armor, which we see in old Greek vases and trusses and paintings and fictions and vases as well. The Romans had stuff similar to this. But this is a Greek belt. It was sent to me by Medieval Shop. It has the lion's head on it. So I believe it's called a royal lion's head Greek belt. I believe you can look it up on Medieval Shop. But the first thing I thought of when I saw it, I wanted to test this style of armor out. I know if you have it where it has multiple pieces, like pieces behind these pieces in between, kind of like you would overlap them, it has even more protection. But in drawings and depictions, this is probably the lightest armor you would see historically with the cuirass on the old Greek armor depiction to protect the upper thigh. And on those depictions, you normally see a tunic or something out of it, some type of cloth. So with this leather, and this one has a lot of studs, as I would call them, or decorative pieces on it, like the lion's head and the little suns, I'm thinking that that might help aid protection as well. The belt itself is leather, and it has a padding on the back, like a type of padding, like a belt style padding. Then we have our cloth, and underneath here, I cut the leg out of the mannequin and put in a piece of elastic. So I'm going to use the Now 2 by Neil Burge. It's razor sharp. Like I said, you can shave hair with it easily. You can see it over there that I'm actually shaving my arm. I'm going to go ahead and use this, see if it's going to chop into this, and see if this gives any protection. I've always been curious how much it would protect the thigh or the garment. I know it's a status symbol a lot of times. I've seen a lot of Romans with a status symbol. But let's get going and see what happens. I love these steels. The steel was sent to me in the handle by Andrea Snow. I want to thank you for that. Check my video on sharpening bronze weapons by Neil Burge. I like using the steel. It may not be 100% historically accurate like stone would be, but just to sharpen it up and not lose the edge over time, I love using the steel. You use it very lightly, and it will correct the edge and make it razor sharp. I love doing that. He even states it might help out. Anyway, let's get started here. This is our belt from Medieval Shoppe with the brass fittings, and it is leather. I have it over two layers of linen. It's the same kind of linen that we used in our video with the sacks. It was sent to us by Andrea Snow as well. It was also the type of stuff that Scaligram used for his fantasy dress. But today, we're just using it as a really thick, heavy wardrobe. Like I said, we'll see shells here. Let's go ahead and try our first cut and see what happens. I'm going to use the way I believe this plate was used with the drawing motion and for thrusting and cutting. I believe that's the way that we're going to do that. Let's go ahead and see what happens. Ooh! Kind of got our edge a little bit, but didn't do much. We cut our leather a little bit. Not too badly. We actually scored it. You can see that right here. And it looks like what happened is it hit first on this piece here, causing it to bounce off. So, there was no cut. All right. As you can see, the cut I did earlier hit the leather. I really bounced off hitting an actual piece. The way these are laid out is quite ingenious. One's tiered in between every other one, kind of like you do a brick wall. So, what ends up happening is if you try to hit one, it's almost impossible. You're probably going to hit at least two of these no matter where you hit. And you're going to impact a piece of this metal. So, is it just being leather? No. It's possible to get in between there. It's possibly an angle. If I try to slash straight across, I'm probably going to hit metal each time, which did damage the plate slightly. Not too bad. I didn't tear it, but it damaged the edge. I'm going to go ahead and maybe cut one more time. I'm not going to continually tear up the edge on this, but that showed it was effective. Go ahead and try one more time. Same kind of result. I slashed about in the same area, right over the ballistics channel. But I hit one of these while it was there, which actually stopped me from cutting it. I also hit the line as well. We've got a little more edge damage, but I can touch that up real quick. Let's go ahead and see what would have happened without the belt. We'll go ahead and try that now. Okay, we're going to try it with just the cloth now. I'm going to try to get it out here and see what happens at the same time. That was a good cut, but it didn't make it through either. Not through the cloth at all. I'm quite amazed the cloth held it that well. I hit it more of a tip than I did with the other that I came across, and we still have no cut. Believe it or not, without the belt, which we know the belt stopped the cut, but you can tell it didn't make it through the belt. It actually tore the strips. Just the cloth being able to give and move and the bounce of the flesh stopping it from cutting through. It's actually a bounce. Without thrusting or a real small tip shot, like if I was stepping back and just barely tipping it, or a thrust, I don't think it's going to go through the cloth. With the thrust, I'm pretty sure it could make it in between the belt straps or go through the belt itself, because it is leather. You know I love a lot of leather bags. For slashing and cutting without the cloth, the belt probably did more than enough. All right, this is going to be just the gel and cutting with the sword in the same manner. Let's see what happens. Yeah, that would be your leg. Without the cloth, that's all it takes. It's straight through, it's into the mannequin. It actually cut into our mannequin. On the back side, I don't know if y'all can see this, it cut into the actual mannequin and into the leg. That tells me this could go through that much gel and into the bone, so that means we're talking about cutting muscle, bone, and so on. That is nasty. Believe it or not, two layers of really heavy linen that's woven, and this is a rough linen like that, it's like sack linen, can stop it from re-floating on the leg possibly, cutting smaller blood. But this alone could do it as well. It didn't cut through it, slightly damaged, but having these spaced out the way they are and having the leather, you're not going to make it fit. Okay, after seeing what it did with the belt, knowing it didn't go through the belt, didn't go through two layers of the linen, I'm going to go ahead and prove it sharp and try one layer. Because I already know if I don't do that, if I don't show how sharp the edge is, if I don't do this and prove it to everybody, they're going to assume that the blade wasn't sharp, because I'm going to assure you I can shade it. It's the white blade, and you try and cut through that with the bouncy gel. The gel may have a little more bounce than a two-layer, but it stops. Bounce has a lot to do with Gannison working, and that's why sometimes it won't even cut through the outer layer. Let's go ahead and try it with the razor-sharp edge on one layer, see if I can make it through. I might even try more of a tip shot, even though I don't think this is going to be a fast-flow style, and see if I can make it through that way. I will. I'll try my best. Got to pick this up. But what ended up happening, is with more of a tip shot on one layer, I was able to cut through that much. So we've got a slice in the leg. The leg would be bleeding. I mean, and it cuts other than you'd think. Once it comes through, like yay so much, the blade drags across and the cloth moves, because the cloth's free-flowing. So we actually have a slice in the leg that's substantial. If you see it, there's a slice right here that's substantial. I can now test, because I have ballistic gel, it goes in, it's an illusion the way it works, it goes in a good inch and a half. So yes, it wouldn't have looked bad in the material, but what ended up happening is our blade went in an inch and a half and then grew across the leg. That's what you can't see. So yes, the tip shot works like I've always said. It's just the regular cut, when you try to slice it, does not seem to work. And of course, we know the old-fashioned works almost every time. That's why you need multiple layers of cloth. Anyway, we had a nice cut into this, and the cut itself is doing three or four inches across and about an inch and a half deep. So yes, the tip shot with one layer went through. I think this was an exciting video, and what we did learn is that this belt, even as light or dainty as it may seem, even as this type of protection, and yes, there's all kinds of elaborate ways you can make it better, it's still enough to protect your leg, even if your leg was bare. It was enough to stop this egg, and this was another period of time when the blade had actually been used. Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed the episode. If you want to look at one of these for like your costume or garb, go by Medieval Shop. And thank you again, Neal Burrage, for this fine blade. It formed beautifully, wonderfully today. Razor sharp still to this day. Thank you all, and be sure to like and subscribe, and ring the bell.