does shit come off leather easily?

I can't fathom the number of animals I've murdered in video games...

I believe I've killed at least 1000 boars in one sitting. We're digital mass murderers! But that's ok, I have also been digitally sentenced, imprisoned, digitally raped and murdered, and digitally risen from the grave to have my vengeance on the Tolkien universe --

The numbers of elves and dwarves and humans and gnomes that have met their untimely death at my undead hands, wrapped in leather, cloaked in shadows -- another very large number of killings.

You may refer to me as a High Warlord of Blackrock Mountain. Rawr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Death to ALL life! May the black dragonflight rise again! May they roast endless numbers of sheep.

He has that "douchebag" delivery. Bit narcissistic.

Seems to have the same stereotypical leather-racing-outfit-color-matches-his-Japanese-sportbike mentality. You've ALL met that sort of bike rider.

I completely agree with her about Lars on many points. He often (very often actually) makes his technique seem "the best in the world" when compared to ANY other technique (as there are A LOT of shooting techniques; some that need different bows, materials, and setups).

Kind of like being able to shoot through plate-mail... Lars would NEVER be able to pull that off (of course no one, with a shortbow and the wrong arrow--or tip--will be doing it either; the crossbow is as close as you can get to being small and puncturing plate) as it requires a huge amount of pull force to puncture plate (even heavy English oaken wood shields). The type of bow is a big issue, because that is where you get your draw strength. But, what type of tip you have on your arrow will determine whether or not it even goes into or just bounces off the armor...

However, for the most part, archers didn't try to puncture plate armor--because to be honest about it: it was HARD, it required a VERY heavy bow and expensive tips (of course the bows were also expensive, because they would not be made out of normal material--it might be a specially imported type of wood that could hold up to extreme forces; the string may also be made of something a bit different than normal). So, you didn't have very many people walking around with the innate ability to puncture plate. BUT, what most archers trained a VERY long time to accomplish was extreme accuracy, for one reason alone: armor.

Instead of trying to puncture plate or even chain, archers instead aimed for gaps or areas were there was no coverage (basically anywhere you bend or connect the armor to another piece or tie/connect itself together; so places like under the armpit or along the side of the body were the armor is pulled together and tied shut). Then they may not have to go through anything at all, or they will only have light leather or heavy cloth armor in the way--either way they will penetrate, and they will slowly kill their target by slowing them down and immobilizing them, then moving in for the finishing blow OR if they hit the right place they can just let blood loss finish them off...

But, this requires extreme accuracy, especially in battle AND especially so if you are firing from a horse (if you were lucky you were able to ride behind someone and concentrate solely on firing your shots, then you could add a bit of speed as well). This is the one place that Lars has horribly mislead people--OR he has made a really great breakthrough. But, if Lars never bothers to really demonstrate this stuff, we have no idea how great an archer he really is.

His entire video is one gigantic edit. Every shot and "trick" has been setup with the camera in the right place. The biggest problem is we don't know if it took Lars 1000 attempts to accomplish some of these feats (he makes it sound in some areas that it happens VERY fast, however...but due to the editing, or how he edited it, we actually have no idea if his claims are true) or if he did it in ten...or right off the bat...

That is why I said we needed to wait for Lars to actually talk to us about this whole thing, and to clear various areas up (records and competition). Because he has set a very high bar for himself, and from his own video he seems to be amazing--but, I like many know that if you edit enough and try something over and over again, you can make yourself look like an expert *whatever* whenever you wish to do it...

I agree heavily with her about his historic claims (and also mocking him on his "super clumsy" shots and setups to make fun of "modern" archers); she also points out, correctly, how wrong he is on some of those claims. Like everyone shooting from the left side; which somehow Lars, in ALL his studying completely and utterly missed. Which tells me one thing: she knows more about archery history than Lars actually does.

But, is Lars actually a great archer? Would Lars be a good archer in a battle, or more specifically his "technique"? Lastly, is he really an unique archer more than worth praising? We won't know until Lars does what I mentioned above; he must meet these criticisms head on.

If we allow Lars time to learn how to ride a horse; or it might be a bit more fair to just allow him to ride behind someone controlling the horse, which was a common practice even in battle (then make sure Lars knows how to also fire properly from a horse, since it requires controlling a horse--if you're alone--and staying on the horse using your thigh muscles...which is actually a pretty hard thing to do...and requires expert horsemanship; asking Lars to accomplish this is laughable, as this type of thing would have been a lifetime achievement in the past AND any archer that could fire fast, accurate, and ride a horse by himself...would have been a horrific force on the battlefield; then give him a sword/melee skill--make sure they have a lot of upper body strength--and a very well made, thick steel buckler and he'd be godlike; and then enough armor to protect from arrows...BUT this means you have to be very strong...otherwise you will never be able to accomplish ANY of the feats with the bow mentioned above; BTW, I'm mentioning a superhero right here, there "may" have been a few people like this in history, but they would've been very few and far apart...and more than likely used sparingly).

Mounted archers are extremely powerful against all units that are mounted yet slower than them and of course those on foot and without a long range means of attacking them (at least shorter than the mounted archer's range), this I will always agree with. We already know that mounted archery units could create absolute havoc in the past, see: Alexander The Great. However, eventually people figured out how to deal with this type of threat as well... But, horse mounted archers do have their "nemeses", namely foot archers--since they can take some time (if an arrow comes their way, they block it--it is much harder for a horse archer to carry around a big shield or at least just have on sitting nearby--or you can aim for their horse, which is why above I said that "superhero" like warrior would need a melee skill, because eventually they WILL be on the ground).

So, again, we have to wait and see if Lars bothers to respond to this video and to ALL of the others that have also been made (he did make a lot of people angry; as he did make some stuff up and possibly "overshoot" the mark on other claims and possibly even his own abilities...). I won't hold my breath though.

I think we can all come to a fairly logical conclusion on this. If Lars NEVER responds to anything, then we will have to assume that a lot of his "super-speed" with "accuracy" was due to one thing alone: editing.

Phew, I think that covers everything...it certainly was long enough!!!!

You are certainly welcome to your opinion, I just disagree.
I find it easy to believe that closely held military techniques could have been lost once the tool (bow) was no longer useful in the military. That is certainly the case for sword fighting/making.
As he mentioned, the method used today is better for stationary target shooting, the kind of shooting done today. Old school methods are so lost that most people believe in the back mounted quiver, which he showed clearly doesn't work in practice. Aiming with one eye also doesn't work on moving targets at different ranges, you need both eyes to determine distance properly.
As for armor, long bows penetrate plate armor, with mail beneath, and leather beneath that, at serious distance. It seems like a non-broad head arrow should penetrate chain mail and leather padding relatively easily, it would only need to split 1 or 2 rings to get through as I see it, which isn't that much. Also, I note at least one of his bows is not totally old school, but seems to be an odd compound style, probably giving him more power than it seems.
Shooting the arrow out of the air, I won't call fake, but probably took dozens of tries to get, even though the arrows were lobbed at him. Splitting one was likely unintentional, but still cool!

Chain mail was never just metal rings...it was always backed by hard leather at the least. I do not find it believable that a 10# bow could penetrate -real- chain mail. When he gets some unbiased, reputable third party to verify his claims I'll reconsider...until then, I can't see this as anything more than some kid's fantasy.

Granted, not how most books are made today, but this is about specialized leather bound editions. They are still made, but barely.
Maybe should have been titled "the dying art of making a book"?
As an aside, is that a Gutenberg press?

I had all the stitching replaced in my old (Red & Black) Air Jordan High Tops and had the heel re-inforced.
When I took them in, he looked at me funny. But the shoes were $170 and made entirely of leather. I just told him to do what he could and not to worry if it didn't work out.

What I got back was like a completely new pair of shoes. And the heels were built up solid. That guy was amazing. I paid the $40 and was on my way...

Edit: they looked just these: http://cdn.sneakernews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/air-jordan-1-vntg-banned.jpg

Pretend it's a lacy, leather, form-fitting shirt.

Leathers.

Wear leathers. And a helmet.

Show this vid to all new motorcycle riders. And old ones.

Can't really blame the minks. If it were legal, we'd be wearing us, too. You know there'd be a market for human leather.

Interesting In ancient times these would more likely have been water powered, and obviously made with wood, leather, and bronze instead of plastic.

http://www.mechanical-toys.com/History%20page.htm (and particularly the short section on Ctesibius)

"...leather and love are gonna take me high,
fishnet tights around me, clinging to your thigh..."

@ChaosEngine You had a completely viable excellent reason to make a back up addition with the youtube associated embed. I smack your face with my leather glove for not taking appropriate care of your post.

*backup=[...snipped...]


Now I can go to bed feeling like I did something today. Hurruh.