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Middle Ages

The Armorer's Trade

The Armorer's Trade
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   grades 5 to 7
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   6.76

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    etching, battlefield, lightweight, armorer, lessen, rank, medieval, heated, trusty, wealthy, pounded, better, furnace, stab, injury, armor
     content words:    Middle Ages

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The Armorer's Trade
By Sharon Fabian 		  
1     In the Middle Ages, everything was made by hand, including those gleaming suits of armor that knights, and sometimes even their horses, wore.
 
2     The craftsmen who made suits of armor were called armorers. They had the metal-working skills of a blacksmith, but they also had the more specialized skills needed to make a suit of armor. Each suit of armor was made of many, many little pieces of metal, and each piece had to be worked by hand.
 
3     In the early years of the Middle Ages, armorers made chain mail suits. Chain mail was made of hundreds of little metal rings fastened together to form a mesh. To make chain mail, the armorer would first wrap metal wire around a pole to form a coil. Next, he would cut the coil down one side to split it into many individual rings. Each ring then had to be pounded flat, joined together at the ends, and fastened to the other rings.
 
4     Chain mail protected its wearer from slashing swords, but it didn't protect him from other types of attack. A lance could stab through chain mail, and a heavy blow would cause injury through the chain mail.
 
5     Armorers were always looking for new ideas to protect the knights better. They tried heavy padded garments to lessen the impact when a knight was hit. They also tried pieces of solid metal, known as plate armor.

Paragraphs 6 to 12:
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