[Ansteorra-archery] Combat Archery - New Society Marshallate Ruling

[Eadric Anstapa]

Marlin and Amanda Stout wrote:
>
> What if we add to our inspection procedure a test for foam penetration 
> of a helm?
Well sure you can do that if ya want and if you think you can put 10000 
pieces of ammo at Gulf War through that test in a timely manner.  It has 
always been an option.

Those of us who have worked at the society level for blunt testing and 
approval have test box rigs set up.  Basically what a test box consists 
of is a frame with horizontal bars like you would see on a helm.  The 
parts are 1" apart.  Not 1" on center.  In other words the grill consist 
of what would be the grill on a just barely _*illegal*_ helm.  So if a 
the marshal doing the inspection had a dowel  to gauge that was just 
barely over an inch  the helm might pass.  The idea is to test against a 
grill that would be almost worst case scenarios.

The 1/2" behind it there is a plank of green floral foam.  The foam will 
permanently dent and show a very slight touch.  You can then try cram 
testing to see how you can dent the foam  and can shoot to try and dent 
the foam.  That is basically the initial test that is used for any new 
blunt designs that you want to get approved.

Also various helm designs can be worse about letting the foam in.  For 
instance sometimes, depending on the blunt design a thin visor slit cut 
across sheet metal can be worse because the sheet metal is only 14 of 16 
gauge thick.  The foam has less steel to squeeze past.

Also here is a a picture of the helm that had the foam from an arrow 
squeeze through the eye slot at Gulf War this year with the rigid blunt 
stopping hard outside the helm.
http://windrosearmoury.com/images/gallery_images/justina.jpg
A very high dollar well made and completely legal helm but you can see 
how the shape of the face sorta funnels arrows right into the eye rather 
than shed them away from it.

The rules say  that no part of a weapon may be FORCED more than 1/2" 
into a legal helm.  Lots of weapons fail that test.  Take a helm that 
has a gap of 0.99" between two sheets of 16ga steel  and you can FORCE 
just about any low profile thrusting tip through it.  A great many 
padded polearms and such you can FORCE more than 1/2" of foam into a gap 
like that as well.

Once of the things that all fighters are supposed to be able to do is 
maintain control of their weapons.  When you or I shoot a bolt we no 
longer have control over it and that is one reason  our projectiles are 
going to be held to a higher standard than other some other weapons in 
regards to padding.  The other reason is that a bolt at close range out 
of a powerful bow is traveling blunt first  faster than probably any 
other weapon does on the field.  So because there have been incidents 
this year at Gulf War, West An Tir War, and Pennsic  the society has 
decided that CA blunts are going to be held to a higher standard and now 
have to be 1.5" in diameter.  Fellwalker and other heavy UHMW blunts 
have always had to be 1.5", Baldar Blunts are 1.5", it's not the end of 
the world.

-EA



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ansteorra.org/pipermail/ansteorra-archery-ansteorra.org/attachments/20080812/122b92b9/attachment-0003.htm>