So, my armor broke one day, and I noticed that the armor strength thing in the HUD didn't disappear until like 5 seconds after my chestplate had broken into pieces by a sweetberry bush. All you habe to do is have a piece of armor break, have that be your only piece of armor and then pray that it happens to you too because it only happened once to me. The attached picture shows this whole thing a bit better, I'm terrible at summarizing, so, uh, bye.