The helm im working on

Saxius · Post by **Saxius** » Wed Sep 09, 2009 6:55 am

I took the lion helm from Alexander a sparten front and a curithion back so far all ive got is a drawing ill keep u guys posted on progress

MJBlazek · Post by **MJBlazek** » Wed Sep 09, 2009 7:04 am

That could be pretty cool.
I like the drawing.

except for the Corinthian front, it could almost look like the Lion Parade Sallet from the 15/16th Century.

Halberds · Post by **Halberds** » Wed Sep 09, 2009 9:54 am

Welcome Saxius,

This should be an interesting project.
We look forward to more progress pics.

Don't burn your self on the hot metal. :wink:

I always do.

Hal

Pitbull Armory · Post by **Pitbull Armory** » Wed Sep 09, 2009 10:29 am

Hi there, Welcome to the AA. Thats a neat project. Is the lion going to be a separate piece? or the actual helm top? Good luck and post pics as you go if you get time.

Take care

Pitbull

Saxius · Post by **Saxius** » Wed Sep 09, 2009 12:25 pm

I'm going to start with a full 16 Ga. helm then make the lion out of brass and braze the lion in segments to the helm then cover the rest of the helm with sheets of brass in select places on the helm then braze all in place making sure that none of it will come apart while fighting

Jaymes · Post by **Jaymes** » Wed Sep 09, 2009 3:19 pm

that sounds like its gonna be a badass helmet.

good luck on it, I cant wait to see the progress pictures.

Swete · Post by **Swete** » Wed Sep 09, 2009 7:12 pm

Man, I can't wait to strike that helm at practice!

Pitbull Armory · Post by **Pitbull Armory** » Thu Sep 10, 2009 12:39 am

Hi there, That sounds good but id make the brass part removable, so you could take if off while fighting and put it on for show. You could use screw backed studs and it would still look nice. Just a thought, it would be a shame to dent it up and not be able to get at the bottom side to repair it also.

Take care

Pitbull

Jolly Knight · Post by **Jolly Knight** » Thu Sep 10, 2009 12:46 am

That would be a very cool helmet.

I would not were it in fighting...

I'm looking forward to progress photos.

Saxius · Post by **Saxius** » Thu Sep 10, 2009 6:52 am

Thats a good idea pittbull i didn't think of that but i also planed on melting aluminum behind the raised parts of the lion so it wouldn't get dented but im not sure if it will work ... ill keep the removable idea in mind....... and swete it would be nice to hit something that beautiful wouldn't it

J.G.Elmslie · Post by **J.G.Elmslie** » Thu Sep 10, 2009 9:36 am

Saxius wrote:Thats a good idea pittbull i didn't think of that but i also planed on melting aluminum behind the raised parts of the lion so it wouldn't get dented but im not sure if it will work ... ill keep the removable idea in mind....... and swete it would be nice to hit something that beautiful wouldn't it

my personal suspicion is that filling it with aluminium is going to make it uncomfortable top-heavy, and not really protect the peice properly.... not to mention likely to be really tricky to do.

personally, I'd go with pitbull's suggestion of removable peices; what springs to mind is the winged and dolphin-masked helm made by Kolman Helmschmid around 1520, with removable decoration, which could have a falling buff added, to make it usable on the battlefield.

Saxius · Post by **Saxius** » Thu Sep 10, 2009 12:18 pm

I may just make the helm them add the lion with 16 Ga. as well then cover it with brass

Konstantin the Red · Post by **Konstantin the Red** » Thu Sep 10, 2009 7:09 pm

Electroplating in brass, maybe. "Cover [the 16 ga.] in brass," do you have any idea what you're doing, Saxius?

Either can be done, yes -- in industrial-scale facilities. Either of two kinds: one with a nice big electroplating shop with a large and deep enough tank to submerge the piece in (and the process uses electrical current and solutions of sulphuric acid that would eat the flesh right off your fingers), or else a foundry dunking the piece into a crucible full of molten brass, with attendant fumes of vaporizing zinc, which is noxious to breathe. Frankly, the electroplating process sounds a lot better contained.

Not exactly garage shop stuff there.

Standard in SCA-ready helms these days is 14 gauge mild steel. (Stainless sheet metal, being stiffer, is above standard.) 16 gauge mild is better suited to breasts, backs, and joint armor pieces, especially dished cops. It is not legal for SCA fighting helms because it is rolled to the thin end of 16 gauge tolerances instead of the thick. New-steel sheets in 15 gauge, however, are thick enough to be SCA list-legal. 14's even better, and many SCA helmets use 12ga skulls with 14ga lowers/napes. Steel from a steel shop is cheap, particularly in "drops," partial sheets that are not otherwise conveniently salable, and may thus be picked up even at teenager min-wage budgets.

Your entire helmet, actually, is Corinthian, with very non-Grecian sculpture added on top. Pretty enough -- you're a damn good artist -- but don't think of the result as provably Greek. I'm unaware of any distinctly "Spartan" helmet type. The material of your helmet is non-Greek also, as they built these hats during the Bronze Age when bronze sheet was state of the art. You practically can't get the stuff nowadays -- Grecophiles have looked and come up dry.

Saxius · Post by **Saxius** » Fri Sep 11, 2009 6:51 am

yes electroplating is a good idea but i was going to cover the helm with thin sheets of brass then braze them on and i know it's not exactly pirod but it will match the part i play and i like it and its going to be 16 on 16 thaats more then enough to be leagle

Konstantin the Red · Post by **Konstantin the Red** » Fri Sep 11, 2009 9:45 am

"Part"? "Play"? What are we seeing here? There's such a thing as being too taciturn.

Saxius · Post by **Saxius** » Fri Sep 11, 2009 10:16 am

In the SCA I am 398 bc Myrmidon and archeologist have found very few armor pieces and some wall carvings so i'm going on what i've read and seen and on the walls there is carvings of lion decorated helms as well as normal helms and i found a pic of a helm that's in the Greek museum that was dug from what they say was the city of Myrmida and that's were i got the front from and the lion is just what i think the decoration would have looked like

Konstantin the Red · Post by **Konstantin the Red** » Fri Sep 11, 2009 11:11 am

Ah, that's more like it.

Saxius · Post by **Saxius** » Fri Sep 11, 2009 12:30 pm

im still making the lion helm but ill make the regular one first and post progress of that one first

Konstantin the Red · Post by **Konstantin the Red** » Sat Sep 12, 2009 12:13 am

An excellent plan. Neat-o metalwork is the product of quite a lot of personal experience working metal, so you know how to push it to where you want it to go without cracking or its just refusing to go that last quarter inch because it's gotten workhardened and has turned springy, needing annealing.

Getting to the ultimate goal is most often a multistep process, with several pieces' worth of experience in between Square One and the ultimate dream. One can break the several processes down into sub-goals and execute a piece that is aimed at one of these, before finally uniting all the experiences needed to produce the final goal.

Meantime, a fine thing to do, since this board is made up of oldfashioned kinda guys, is to practice the use of punctuation: these dots and tadpoles are not just something for you to get wrong on an English test, but aids in both organizing your thoughts and in presenting them so others can get them too. You wouldn't be happy with corrupted boundaries on your hard drive, now would you? Punctuation fixes that sort of thing inside a paragraph. You certainly aren't limited by the constraints of txtmsg-ese here on this board. Capitalization and punctuation are part and parcel of a literately written English sentence; do please enjoy their full use. We'd rather hear your own voice and speech than a textwall machinegun burst.