Muscle cuirasses

[Zarax]

I noticed that a few units in EB uses muscle cuirasses and I'm curious about the effectiveness of this kind of armour.
How protective would it have been in relation for example to chain mail?
Was it heavier?
I assume it was also quite expensive due to their restriction to few elites but I have to admit I know very little about it...

Would any historian here be so kind to enlighten me?

[geala]

You should have a look to the http://www.romanarmy.com/rat/index.php and use the search function. It is a good forum for questions about ancient arms and armour.

I can only give a short and imprecise survey of what I believe (although I'm not a historian):

Muscle cuirasses were normally made from bronze and bronze was a relatively expensive material. If you want to wear a solid cuirass comfortably it had to be made more or less especially for you which adds costs too. A solid cuirass deflects many weapons and dispenses the energy over a wider area (no blunt traumata therefore). The muscle cuirass gives no protection to the groin or thighs so you may add pteryges; mail shirts normally covered that areas.

The solid cuirass allows no heat exchange which is a drawback compared to mail. On the other hand, mail without a thick padded undergarment is not a very good idea and with the undergarment mail armour is a heater too. I don't have experiences with ancient muscle or bell cuirasses but late medieval plate cuirasses are more comfortable than thick gambesons with mail especially when it is hot.

The effectiveness of an armour depends on the quality and thickness of the material. You could have soft and stringy or very hard bronze - both has advantages and disadvantages. Normally a cuirass made of 1 mm bronze or more would offer a very good protection. There are only a few mentions of wounds inflicted through (perhaps) bronze cuirasses.

Bronze cuirasses were lighter than mail shirts weighting ap. 3,5 to 5,5 kg compared to 8 to 10 kg for mail without sleeves.

[Zarax]

So it was a pretty good although expensive form of protection, making it a good choice for elites I guess...
I thought that it was quite close to scale or chain in terms of protection hence its fall of use in later years but now I guess the main reason was pretty much the sheer cost of a custom made armour...

[Matic]

Also, apparently, high quality bronze was better than the iron of the day, but more expensive to create due to the availability of tin .

[mAIOR]

Nope. Good iron weapons and armor from the day were something like steel (because of the tempering process they were put trough). So bronze was falling out of use.
Tough it was easier to make good quality Bronze than iron. Maybe you're refering to this as the process of tempering iron really well is time consuming and tricky.


Cheers...

[russia almighty]

But an Iron Muscle Cuirass(I'm assuming thats what the Heitori wear) would be even better than chain ?

[Sarcasm]

Nope. Good iron weapons and armor from the day were something like steel (because of the tempering process they were put trough). So bronze was falling out of use.
Tough it was easier to make good quality Bronze than iron. Maybe you're refering to this as the process of tempering iron really well is time consuming and tricky.


Cheers...

Hmmm...No. Only the outward layers of swords and armor had any sort of likeness to steel, except for relatively few exceptions (for example, Hispanic swords in general).

To make an iron muscle cuirass would be nothing like a steel one. Homogeneous steel plate was something that was pretty much unknown in the ancient world, and certainly not in the same sense as late medieval one. They'd cast it as they they did with the bronze ones, I assume, and then beat it to improve the shape. They'd be comparatively susceptible to fracture, to bronze, not to mention it has a much less probability of a glancing blow.

Just because you accidentally get some of the iron to alloy with carbon during the forging process, doesn't mean you're making steel armour.

[Watchman]

The technological prequisites for making monolith iron cuirasses of any useful quality were not developed until High Middle Ages AFAIK. Cast and forged iron doesn't cut it so far as I know.

Although you might get a serviceable result by making the thing in parts and joining those together (usually by welding) - in some parts of the world that was a popular way to make local knock-offs of European cuirasses, which were often given to local potentates as gifts.

[Spoofa]

why were those darn iberians so awsome at metal smithing?

[Watchman]

Good local ore and a lot of time spent working it AFAIK.

[Sarcasm]

I'll just paste the Iberian blacksmith description that I did a long time ago, before the Lusitani were made...

Iberian Master Smith - A master Iberian blacksmith is a much respected person in a settlement, almost in a religious sense, and his kind, widely recognized in the known world as the best in that trade. He is the person who shapes the iron, extracted from the sacred Earth, and shapes it into whatever is necessary for his costumers, be it armour, shields or weapons. The third was of paramount importance for all the tribes in Iberia; owning a weapon was a mark of manhood, and to give it up, the ultimate shame.

Each weapon is made through a ritualized process of manufacture, it is also customized to its client’s arm proportions, often richly decorated and inlaid with silver, turning it into the most expensive possession some men have.

Filon and Diodorus describe the process of making an Iberian sword: ‘[regarding] the preparation of the above-mentioned iron sheets for the so-called Hispanic swords: to test if these are good, they take the hilt in the right hand and the point in the left, holding it horizontally, then pull downwards on both ends until they touch the shoulders, then release them quickly. Once the sword is released it straightens again without showing any kind of distortion. This is due to the fact that iron is extraordinarily pure, and is worked later with fire, in such a way that it does not contain…any defect; neither does the iron get too soft or too hard. After this they beat it repeatedly when cold, as this gives the iron flexibility…They do not forge it with great hammers neither beat it with violent blows, because these, if given obliquely, twist and harden the sword throughout its entire thickness in such a way that if we tried to flex it would not yield but would break violently due to the compactness of the hardened material…They therefore beat the sheets while cold on both surfaces, hardening each side, while the inner part remains soft from not having received the blows, which reach the depths of the metal only lightly. The sword owes its flexibility to being composed of three layers, two hard and one soft in the middle.’ ‘…The process of manufacture…is very special: they bury the sheets of iron, leaving them until rust has destroyed the weak part of the metal, leaving only the most solid part of it. With this iron they produce excellent swords…’

Modern tests made on ancient swords reveal that they had achieved a high degree of perfection in tempering and cementation, and that they could only, with difficulty, be improved through modern methods.

[Spoofa]

I've read that discription somewhere in my campaign, too bad control of the iberian penensula doesnt mean control of the fine craftsmanship of the metalsmith's for the Romani or any other faction that conquer's it, though maybe you should implement some form of better metalworking in the Iberian peninsula for factions controlling it somehow?

[Sarcasm]

Way ahead of you

[mAIOR]

Hmmm...No. Only the outward layers of swords and armor had any sort of likeness to steel, except for relatively few exceptions (for example, Hispanic swords in general).

To make an iron muscle cuirass would be nothing like a steel one. Homogeneous steel plate was something that was pretty much unknown in the ancient world, and certainly not in the same sense as late medieval one. They'd cast it as they they did with the bronze ones, I assume, and then beat it to improve the shape. They'd be comparatively susceptible to fracture, to bronze, not to mention it has a much less probability of a glancing blow.

Just because you accidentally get some of the iron to alloy with carbon during the forging process, doesn't mean you're making steel armour.

Actually, swords are better that way. An outer layer of hardened iron/steel and an inside of soft iron. As for armor, well tempered armor (I never spoke of an homogeneous plate of steel. I believe you misunderstood me I talked about iron being extremelly well tempered wich can aquire a resistance nearly steel like...) could be nearly as hard as steel.
Anyway, I'll stick to it. Good steel cuirasses were more time consumig than Bronze ones as bronze is much easier to mold and treat; however they were better.


Cheers...

[blank]

Actually, swords are better that way. An outer layer of hardened iron/steel and an inside of soft iron.

Actually, the outer layers (2 of them) of Iberian swords were not steel, but iron.
The same method (with softer metal in the middle) was also used in later swords, like Japanese samurai swords, but due to the hard layers being steel of various quality, the final result was better. Basically, there were several choices for a blacksmith: either make the outer layer(s) tougher, in which case it would be harder to break, but easier to dull, lose its sharpness, or make it softer, so it would retain it's edge, but be easier to bend or break when meeting a hard object (such as armor)

[geala]

Hmm, please, what does "steel" mean? As far as I can see nowadays every piece of iron with a certain percentage of carbon is named steel, hardened or not.

Effectiveness depends on the amount of hardening of the steel/iron. Many ancient iron/steel weapons were hardened at the tip and the edge, others not so much. But the same can be true for bronze swords. Bronze can be hardened very much; recently I read about a test of a bronze sword against an iron sword and the iron sword broke.

But the op asked about cuirasses. To have a cuirass with a very hard surface must not be the only way to good protection. Soft and dilative materials can also do the job. Soft bronze is hard to pierce, it deforms and takes the energy away from the stroke. Some say, mail made of soft iron (as it was seemingly used in the medieval time) will bend more than the harder rings often used in modern tests and will be therefore harder to penetrate. Over-hardened steel armour like in the late 15th century is just another way.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Softer Iron will loose it's edge quicker.

Many ancient weapons and tools were infact steel, Celtic swords had high-carbon edges but I'm not sure they qualified as steel while Iberian blades were in fact more or less steel. Even some Roman Galdii were in fact high-carbon iron on the outside, some examples apparently had coal dust hammered into them.

I'm sure there were smiths who could made decent iron armour but they would have been few and far between and any smith of that level of skill would work in bronze anyway.

Even in the Hellenistic age Bronze was the supperior alloy in general, it just wasn't ecenomical.