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Originally Posted by fernando
In the provinces of Coahuila, Nueva León and Texas a version using padded cotton was used, but its efficacy was lower than those with 7 skins. Even so an arrow shot by a strong native could get through a 8 skin cuera.
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Olá, Nando
You provide some interesting background info. I think the padded cotton is not necessarily lower than the layers of only skin, based on experiments conducted by archer friends in the Netherlands, who were serious about traditional Eastern archery. He says it all depends on how thick the quilting was.
Shooting tests with pointed steel arrows shot from reasonably heavy bows demonstrate some surprising things. I was with one of these friends, shooting in a gym that had theater-stage curtains on the far end, separating another portion of the hall. Guys were shooting at various targets, including the usual straw butts, and doing tests against wood boards. Same arrows from same bows, which could easily penetrate an inch or so into a board, just bounced off the curtain, hardly leaving a mark on the cloth!
During the 1594 Japanese invasion of Korea, the defenders developed a quick and easy to make armor for foot-soldiers, made of quilted layers (about 30) of coarse rice-fiber paper. It easily stopped arrows, and even
musket balls. The ancestor of the Kevlar vest.
The Mongols wore a shirt of well-woven silk under their armor. If an arrow pierced the armor, the silk kept the point from going very far into the body, so someone could break the arrow shaft, remove the armor, and gather the folds of the shirt around the arrowhead and pull it out, leaving a more superficial wound that might mean greater chances of survival than if it went deep into tissue, or an organ.
I'll leave it to a physics guy to explain why arrows, which are so good at breaking through the links of chain mail or sticking deep into wood and harder materials, can be stopped so easily by soft things like quilting and curtains.
Filipe