Best close combat weapon for penetrating mail armor | rondel dagger vs half sword

Hi, I am Dicky Temmen, armored fighter in non-choreographed night fights and today we want to speak about male armor and take a look how protective male armor can be. So we want to look only at riveted male and compare high quality male armors. What is exactly riveted male? Male armor is made out of steel or iron wire and the ends of wire can be connected with rivets to make it much stronger. Of course the main parts of night armor are the steel plates that are nearly impenetrable. But unfortunately there are always gaps in night armor so there is the possibility to slide between the plates. So male armor is nearly the only way to protect a knight fully. And for my fights I need full protection. For that reason I ordered male armor. It's very time consuming to make male armor out of wire by yourself and it's much harder than you expect. to get the right shapes of your body into male armor. You don't want to have wizard arms where the male is hanging around and hinder you in movement and sometimes can get stuck in the rest of your armor. The measurements on male armor have to be very precise. Sometimes it's only one line of rings that makes a huge difference. If you have one line less then it's sometimes not possible to flex your muscles and get in some of the positions. But if you have one line of male rings too much there will be too much material that will be heavy or can get stuck in your armor and hinder your movement as well. So if you are interested in close fitting male armor that is tailored to your sizes I can recommend Chainmail Tailor from Italy. You will find the link in the video description so link below. The first male armor part that we want to test today is made out of eight millimeter flat steel rings. Then we have my newest male armor from Chainmail Tailor the six millimeter steel flat rings and for the last test we have our nine millimeter stainless steel flat rings and we want to test these in a single layer and in a double layer. Because I wear as a skirt a double layer of male armor to protect my lower body very efficient and we want to look if there is the slightest possibility to penetrate two layers of male armor at all. With a very sharp and pointy dagger and that beautiful sword that is very pointy and also sharp at the tip. So for the first test we want only test how hard it is to penetrate the gambeson. It's a double layer of linen and wool inside and under it there's clay. That was super easy there was no power at all and I had a deep cut like that and I can penetrate definitely till here but we will reach the wooden chair under it. So eight millimeter flat rings we stopped when we reached the bottom of the clay and this is a possible penetration till the other rings would have stopped it. In that case they stopped I didn't penetrate it. Yeah it stops it but you have the chance to push through and again didn't penetrate it. That opened one ring but stopped here. So it stopped here but now I can push through. These are the most powerful. Let's take a look if we also penetrate in that angle that easily. Nope it didn't penetrate it didn't penetrate it didn't penetrate it didn't penetrate it stopped again. I penetrated on the other side through the clay and the tip reached my finger. No I didn't penetrate it. In comparison the downward movement gives you much much more power than a forward movement and again I didn't penetrate the rings. For the eight millimeter flat rings I have to say that they are good protection in 10 out of 10 thrusts. From a lower angle I was not able to penetrate these rings but in the downwards movement I was able to penetrate the mail two out of ten times. That's not that much but still there is the possibility and when I was pushing the blade from the top with my full body in most cases I was able to penetrate deep enough. Definitely good protection but let's see what the six millimeter male armor do and resist. There is one important factor the six millimeter rings if you don't penetrate you can't get the tip of the dagger as deep as in our eight millimeter where you penetrate much deeper without piercing the rings. Didn't penetrate it. That was much deeper and I pierced one of the rings so I opened one of the rings and now I can push through. So of course the rings are not harder than the eight millimeter and we will have the same results. I can push through again and I bend one of the rings and now I have to push through again because I only cut one of the rings so they are scratched now. So I didn't pierce the ring I was able to get a little bit more far and bend one of the rings a little bit but here it stopped completely. Let's try it again. No, nothing. I wasn't very deep in it. No, nothing. So let's see what the sword can do against the six millimeter male armor and I already split a ring in that movement where I was not able to do it with the dagger blade so all these attacks have much more power. I opened here around three rings with only one thrust in it so with the dagger it's much harder really much harder. Yeah I can push it through on the other side outside so that's really interesting. Yeah that wasn't much more force. I pierced one ring but these are very very heavy. I opened two rings and I'm deep enough in it so of course now I can push the blade but yeah I'm stuck in the wood already. With two hands on the blade I have much more power from a lower thrust and these lower thrusts are much easier to achieve than the downward thrusts with a dagger. So that's one of the reasons why a sword is a very mighty weapon in night fights. I opened a couple of rings so it's of course not that easy to get through if you don't have the perfect angle so I'm on a lower stance here and therefore it's not that easy and I will take the chair now downwards to make these thrusts with the sword. I opened one ring but not very deep. Okay that one was deep. It doesn't feel nice to get in with the sharp blade and it's not very sharp. So I was through the clay again and I can get that deep. I cut through two rings at minimum two and a half ring and for the last test the nine millimeter stainless steel. First of all with nine millimeter we have a small problem. Without piercing the ring this is how far we can already get and that's not good. But what about a double layer of nine millimeter? So I pierced the first ring but this is like the eight millimeter with a double layer because the second layer stopped it. So now we're in again. I pierced the first ring of the layer on top and now we will see if I can pierce the layer down below with pushing in. Pushing through two rings is really hard. So of course I feel how I pushed through the first ring but the second ring is undamaged and to push through stainless steel ring that is undamaged is really hard and also push the sides of the other rings away. So I wasn't able to push further but this is still dangerous. What about one layer? Yeah no problem. I can pierce the ring and get even further than this. With nine millimeter rings it's very easy to get in a couple of millimeters or even centimeters before you have to pierce a ring and therefore I can't recommend nine millimeter rings against rondel daggers and very pointy weapons. For me these tests were very interesting to see how the dagger and sword blade got blunt over time and dull so that it's not that hard for me anymore to take my fingers like this over the blade. Yes I can feel a little bit of sharpness in some of the spots but these are blunt now. Of course I did a couple of tests but it was harder and harder over time to pierce the different mail types. Piercing mail armor is very hard with the dagger blade. Of course when there's no give back and a thrust from the top you have a small potential to penetrate the mail from a top thrust but it's only getting easier when you have two hands on the blade and the power to push through with your whole body. If you try to pierce with a dagger blade in a lower angle and thrust like that it's nearly impossible to manage these thrusts. Yes can happen but very unlikely. You are pretty safe in mail armor. With the half sword it was a different story. Here the lower thrusts had definitely enough power to penetrate the mail armor a couple of times. On the thrusts from the high guard I didn't felt a lot of difference to the dagger where I was able to push through with my whole body weight. For that reason I think the sword have a lot of advantages to pierce mail armor but of course on the bigger rings the tip of the sword wasn't able to puncture as deep if the sword didn't pierce the ring. So the narrower blade of the dagger had an advantage if you didn't pierce a ring but with piercing a ring the sword had an advantage. Then thanks for watching. Keep in mind that sharp swords and daggers are more capable than you think to kill a knight and stay safe. Don't kill your training partners and bye bye. I'm definitely impressed by the chain mail armor of chainmail tailor and how the six millimeter mail armor performed in my test and I think that a six millimeter mail armor is definitely the best choice for your neck where so many arteries are sitting here next to the skin and where you don't want to have a blade only a few millimeters or a centimeter in. Yes you can have wider rings at your arms but even here I think six millimeter is the way to go and I will show it on myself because this is an interesting connection of the two mail arms so it's easy to slip in and use these. I can say that this armor fits me perfectly so gives me the movement to all my body parts and I can flex my muscles still here so it's perfectly shaped