THE VIDEO SHELF · longbow versus plate armour
ARROWS vs ARMOUR - Medieval Myth Busting
Tod's Workshop fires full-weight medieval arrows from a 160lb English warbow at reproduced medieval armour. Armour curator Dr Tobias Capwell, an archer and bowyer give historical context and discuss the results.
Why HN readers recommended it
HN considers it the key experimental evidence on how effective longbows really were against armour.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- Tod's Workshop
- Topic
- longbow versus plate armour
- Format
- documentary
- Level
- general
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 2
- HN mentions in dataset
- 3
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2020–2025
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
From the same author: [LINK] [LINK] If you're not yet aware of it (unlikely as it made it 'big' in the overall internet), I believe the video from Tod's Workshop with actual experimentation is a must see: [VIDEO] There is a sequel and many other …
gota on Hacker News · 2025-05
In Why Archers Didn't Volley FireThe youtube channel Todd's Workshop did an interesting video with Tobias Capwell and a few others examining the effectiveness of English longbows against plate armor that I found interesting in a number of respects. In the video they had archer Joe Gibbs shooting a 160lb …
catalogia on Hacker News · 2020-07
In Discovery of oldest bow and arrow technology in Eurasia
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.