View Single Post
Old 4th August 2009, 02:02 PM   #48
A Senefelder
Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2009
Posts: 214
Default

Now that you mention it I seem to remember reading something at some point about expirementation using silk and bullet resistance. I'm not sure where I encountered it, more than likely as some sort of military trials, i'll have to see if I can recall where. It involved multiple layer of fabric, I rememebr that.

As I recall ( most of my study is in European A&A for work so i'm not as up on the East as I should be ) the use of silk under armour was found most anywhere horse archery was the predominant mode of combat for cavalry. An arrow is imparted spin to stabilize flight by its fletchings, this means it will continue to rotate as it penetrates a target/person. The density of the weave of the silk a) slowed arrows down and b) since the silk tended not to cut or tear but maintain integrity as the arrow turned as it penetrated the silk would wrap around the head. There are two principle problems when removing arrows one is that as they are usually of some type of broadhead they tend to rip on withdraw and second that because the arrow turned as it penetrated there is no straight withdraw route as sometimes can be had with a bullet. With silk by slowly pulling the silk taught the fabric bound up with the arrow in the wound would unwrap, causing the arrow to turn backwards from how it came in thus roughly mirroring the corscrew channel it created on entry and minimising tearing and since the silk was wrapped around the head tearing from barbs was also minimized.
A Senefelder is offline   Reply With Quote