Iron/Steel Shields

Were iron and/or steel shields real in ancient/medieval warfare anywhere? I can find lots of stuff about bronze shields, but nothing about iron or steel, it seems like people adopted wooden shields. Am I mistaken?

Pic only tangentially related.

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Irons problem is if someone hits it starts to shake. Plus iron is heavy.

Iron/steel is too heavy to use as a shield of any significant size. It's only relatively recently that it's been possible to make it in single sheets large enough.

Only for small-ish shields such as bucklers or rotellas/rondartsche.

>Plus iron is heavy
Bronze is heavier

Why is there a small dent in both of them?

they were probably hit by something?

Either they were hit by a bullet during battle or it's a bullet proof.

There aren't any shields made purely out of bronze.

Those shields of the Greeks were wood with a bronze cover, a composite construction if you will. The Romans and basically everyone else opted for linen or leather to cover their shields.

Was that a common practice?
To test armor and shields to see if they could stand up to firearms?

Yes

That's where the term "bullet proof" comes from. Obviously there was a limit though, past a certain point even the best armour wouldn't save you; and you probably would want to avoid being hit by cannon fire.

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So at what point did the gun outpace armor?
Or at least where it was no longer practical.

That seems to be right.

differencebetween.net/object/difference-between-iron-and-bronze/

Thanks user.

So would a steel-covered wooden shield even work?

"-proof" as a suffix is used for all sorts of things, like "water proof", "fool proof", etc.

For infantry it was somewhere in the 1600s or 1700s. Cavalrymen were still wearing some armor into the Napoleonic wars, I'm not sure when that was phased out.

>So would a steel-covered wooden shield even work?

Theoretically.

Probably at the time between invention of cartridge and kevlar vests.

Okay, cool, thanks.

People stopped wearing complete suits of field armour during the 17th century in favour of three-quarter suits that wouldn't cover the entirety of the legs. During the 18th century only heavy cavalry still wore armour in the form of a breastplate. And that kept on until the 20th century at which point heavy cavalry in general was phased out.

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>I can find lots of stuff about bronze shields

IIRC Hoplon was made of wood, metal was only on outer layer. If this bad boy was from bronze, you couldn't wield it along 7m long sarissa.

>Thinking hellenofags used hoplons with their sarissas.