Could This "Invisible" Shield Save Your Life?

Smacks shield with a mace, turns it into a birdbath. Lol.

Skall : "Ok, yeah, that was asking a bit too much, admittedly" Me : "At least you didn't shoot it this time."

"Life is very dangerous sometimes, thankfully i have this trusty shield with me!" The world's fastest screwdriver user:

I think you could post it as "Slightly Used" still. Was actually fairly surprising what this small cheap shield could do.

There is a 6mm thick version of such shields and that IS very tough , the standard ones are only 3mm :)

Even those hits that went through, I'd definitely rather be taking those on that shield than my bare arm.

It was honestly still pretty impressive for what it is.

Polycarbonate is freaking STRONG against many types of strikes. If you want to make one that's really brutally strong, layer polycarbonate, then a very thin steel core, and another sheet of polycarbonate. Maybe a sheet of kevlar on the inside. You'd want a good rim too. It's a good idea, but IMO it's a still just a riot shield, made for resisting random blunt instruments and improvised projectiles.

I know the shield began to break up after multiple hits, but this is not far from the performance of a wooden shield. It might even do better if someone applied some reinforcing material to the outside edge, as some wooden shields have. Some redesign according to the principles of wooden shield construction might make it every bit as practical as a wooden shield.

"when the manure hits the air circulation device" 😂 am definitely using that!🤣👍

Gonna be honest, that thing held up SO much better than I thought it would.

You should have compared this to what would happen if you just grabbed a metal garbage can lid.

Videos like this are exactly why subscribing to Skall is worth the effort.

From the thumbnail, I thought it was just a padded forearm cover. Now I understand the joke. I was actually kind of hoping it would be that, since my first RPG character ever had a defensive gauntlet designed like that. Edit: Actually, for $60, this wouldn't be a bad base for a cosplay shield. You could wrap it with a cloth and paint the outside of that to look more historic and probably spend a lot less than trying to find an actual hand-made shield you'd be worried about damaging.

Sometimes you just have to break something cheap.

One point to keep in mind is that as opposed to "self defense shields", if you think of them as "riot shields" sold to civilians... they are quite unlikely to face sharp weapons in this "intended use". So in that sense they fair quite well

“Slight surface wear”

I remember Joerg Sprave (Slingshot channel guy) did a similar video where he made a polycarbonate riot shield and did some testing on it. He got pretty similar results (although with less catastrophic failure); head on strikes were not very effective at all, but hitting the edge caused it to immediately shatter chunks off. He even shot it with a sword launching ballista and it was fine, but cutting the edge using a conventional sword cut caused immediate failure. I suppose if you want to make a shield like this stand up to edged weapons, you would need to line the rim with with a band of steel to prevent bladed weapons from being able to dig into the polycarbonate.

"Ooh, you can see through it even better now." I loved it.

A disadvantage to it being so light is that if you try to attack with it, it'll pack much less of a wallop because it won't have as much mass, & by extension, won't have as much momentum as a shield of about the same thickness made of heavier material; something to keep in mind, since shields are also a weapon.