| From: | Max Rible <cheshire@*****.COM> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: Monofilament cloth (was Re: Questions about stuff) |
| Date: | Wed, 15 Jan 1997 10:30:01 -0800 |
>On Tue, 14 Jan 1997, L Canthros wrote:
>> On Tue, 14 Jan 1997 16:30:29 -0800 Max Rible <cheshire@*****.COM> writes:
>>>I wouldn't expect monofilament weave to do anything about dissipating the
>>>kinetic energy of an attack; this is very fine cloth, not something tough
>>>like kevlar. I would expect it to tranmit impact just fine, and I suspect
>>>it would happily wrap itself around blades and bullets-- blunting sharp
>>>edges just a bit. The major advantage (after making monofilament attacks
>>>a little more like attacking you with a piece of string instead of something
>>>that can easily lop your head off) would be that monofilament cloth would
>>>wrap around things penetrating your skin, like bullets and arrows, and make
>>>it much easier to remove them. (If memory serves, this was a big advantage
>>>that Mongol horsemen had with their silk shirts.)
>> Actually I was assuming that the monofil clothing/armor would be
>> thicker/heavier than normal. 6-10 layers (assuming that this stuff is
>> going to be pretty thin as is) at least. Also, how strong is
>> monofilament? It's gotta be fairly strong, IMO, to be used as a whip. The
>> wire would, of course, be even stronger, but hardly suitable for use as
>> thread:)
I figure that since monofilament is much thinner than ordinary thread,
weaving monofilament thread into cloth yields extremely thin cloth
with a very high thread count per square inch. (This is why it's so
bloody expensive: all that monofilament, and weaving it...) Making
clothing/armor out of strong materials may protect the clothing, but
I don't see it protecting the wearer. For that, you want something that's
capable of spreading out impact over more of your body so you don't get
all the damage in one place, or dissipating kinetic energy so less of the
impact reaches you. Monofilament cloth doesn't seem to have either of
these properties.
>I'm not sure where I heard this, but I think I remember reading somewhere that
>monofil is a single molecular chain and can't be cut or broken except with a
>laser. I'm not too sure about how stretchy it is, either, so I doubt it would
>make very suitable clothing which has to stretch in order to keep from
>prohibiting movement. Maybe if you just made a monofilament _vest_ it would
>be more practical, but it would be leaving your arms free.
The usual notion on monofilament is that it's one molecular chain and it
cuts through everything because it's only one atom thick. I think somewhere
in SR it notes that it's not truly monomolecular, but is still thin enough to
be a lot more dangerous than piano wire. Most cloth doesn't need to be
that stretchy; you can cope with non-stretchy cloth by designing the
clothing to have appropriate slack in it. (So you're not going to have
monofilament tights...)
--
%%% Max Rible %%% cheshire@*****.com %%% http://www.amurgsval.org/~cheshire %%%
%%% "Don't keep all your bats in one belfry." - me %%%
