sorry if this has already been asked, couldn't find it while looking back.
is the rule meant so that you can voluntary take a hit on your armour, i.e. as in the example in the rule book where the dwarf gets hit, takes 4 damage, rolls a 6 and a 1, which means that the armour goes down from original (was 8) to 7 and that he then can opt to take the rest of the damage on his mail to go down to 4 armour rating total (in the example it says 5 but i guess this is an error?) --> meaning you take no damage yourself.
have been playing mutant and understood when reading just the rules the rule to be: you have 8 armour, you roll and if the damage is higher than what you protect then it will go down with the amount of 1 (skull) that you roll, it doesn't say that you can also let the armour degrade voluntary (and it seems a bit odd).