The Armour Archive

What do people do in fixing a bar grille to a helmet?

Welding

Riveting

Bolting

Others?

Combinations of the above or no?

How about attachment points?

How many rivets/bolts?

How many welding points, or continuous bead?

The methods are myriad. Many people favor riveting or flush riveting, attaching the bargrill up the sides of the face. Usually just one rivet center top of face, or else a design that doesn't even have a center bar going all the way up. The riveting may go into the ends of the bars (suitably flattened) or framing members joining the bar ends into a single unit, made of 1/8" flat bar stock, or tabs of the same stuff welded onto round stock frame pieces. The width of the bar stock is to taste, but usually runs 1/2-3/4". Whatever's wide enough to put the rivet holes into, wherever the holes are located. I like three to a side, with perhaps one top center if the design has a long enough center stringer. Could go as few as two per side, but that's cutting the margin of strength pretty far. Four on a side should handle absolutely anybody's demands in say 3/16" rivet diameter. More than that and you're using smaller rivets for a stylistic effect of some kind -- and not something encountered in historic of arms and armor any more often than a bargrill. Some kind of Conan/steppes-tribes Central Asian thingie perhaps. Even the myriad-riveted Japanese helmets did their riveting on their helmet bowls, producing a pretty formidable defense-in-depth for the head in those helmet types that had this feature. You can imagine what all those rivets might do to a katana's edge.

Bolts or screws, practically never. I've never seen them used. For one thing, you don't want them to back out, and they weren't period for attaching parts of helms together anyway. Tournament helms to breast and back, that's a different story, particularly late in period. A spanner to turn the nuts (square nuts) was part of the kit for sporting goods of this kind. Most armor smiths don't have thread tapping cutters anyway; that's a machinist thing.

Welding is used but isn't very popular because welding bar stock to sheet metal takes much more skill and finesse than welding bar stock to bar stock. It's easy to burn right through sheet metal with a torch. Long welding beads are also pretty tough to break apart if you wish to change, modify, or replace your bargrill. A handful of rivets drills out nice and easy. It's not so easy with breaking five or six inches of weld bead, plus there's cleanup afterwards.

Bargrills as part of movable visors are mostly welded nowadays, for a cleaner appearance once everything's been beltground fair and smooth. There are still some period examples of grill-faced club-tourney visors which are of vertical bars riveted at either end, though -- late sixteenth to very early seventeenth, IIRC.

I'd recommend bolting, that way you can switch out the grill with a faceplate if you have one made.

Baron Alcyoneus wrote:I'd recommend bolting, that way you can switch out the grill with a faceplate if you have one made.

I think I have seen bolts at one point, but how might that be done? I had asked the local Mashallate about the "projections on the interior of the helmet" in the armour rules, but no one wanted to commit to a description...

Exactly. Don't, would be my advice. The SCA says no more than 3mm and smooth interior is still better. Hence the 3mm bar stock thing, which may be legally placed either inside the helmet's metal or outside it. Flathead or countersunk rivets.

That said, if you think you simply must use a screw fastening, short studs of all-thread welded to the outer surface of the helmet could be used. I'd need a really compelling reason to do it that way before I went for such a lumpy sort of fastening method, though.

I really recommend riveting the bargrill in.

Loose pin hinges work well- either two at the side on one at the brow.

FWIW

Grills that are welded on to the front tend to help the helmet ring more.

Riveted grills ring less.

A would guess that this has to do with the continuity of vibrating surfaces, and that one slightly loose rivet is enough to disrupt that.

Otherwise, it can really break down into a lot of different ideas.

What does the customer/end recipient want?
What do they NEED (not always the same thing)?
What are they willing to pay (or how much work am I willing to put into it)?
What's going to look good?
What's going to work?
What skills and equipment are available (if you don't have a welder handy, then riveting is the way to go!)?

Obviously a bascinet with a bargrill, exchange system, and a visor isn't going to get riveted or welded to the helmet itself, but you need to engineer the grill so that it snugs up nicely when closed, and work out the hinge system. If you can mimic the lines of the visor with your grill border that's just extra cool.

With some early period styles the cut outs for the cheek plates help define that style (like a roman, or the coppergate) and you need to figure out a way to attatch it without mucking up and covering those lines.

mattmaus wrote:With some early period styles the cut outs for the cheek plates help define that style (like a roman, or the coppergate) and you need to figure out a way to attatch it without mucking up and covering those lines.

The "Spreading a too-narrow helmet" thread had me considering that very point, though not for that reason. What I thought might work would be to bend the side frame pieces to follow the front edges of the cheek pieces, lay these parts to buttweld to the front edges, and weld them in that way. Setting them atop these edges in a lap-weld would also work and be simpler and swifter. Setting them some ways onto those cheek pieces contributed to the problem that Ashcraft-Baker helm had until they rectified matters.

Extending the length of the tab fasteners to such an all-around bargrill frame would allow a slot, or spacing, to appear between the frame and the cheek pieces. This would only look well with the frame exactly paralleling the edge of the cheekpieces, though. If I had to make a helmet styled this way, I should make the bargrill first, and define the front edge of the cheekpieces using the bargrill frame.

And of course there's still the no-frame construction, riveting the ends of each bar directly into the cheekpieces, leaving their profile showing handily. This would call for very strongly built cheekpieces of heavy metal, and lightly dished, to keep up the fullest strength. Sounds plenty labor intensive to me, which recommends it only to the guys building artfully, not so much for production.

Too Narrow Helm

Konstantin the Red wrote:What I thought might work would be to bend the side frame pieces to follow the front edges of the cheek pieces, lay these parts to buttweld to the front edges, and weld them in that way. Setting them atop these edges in a lap-weld would also work and be simpler and swifter.

I've done the lap weld. It's really pretty easy with a steady hand and a mig welder.

Typicaly I would start with straight bar, and tack it on one end, with the bar shaped well enough for me to start the weld. From there, weld with one hand and pull/push/twist on the bar with the other. Using the heat from the weld as it progresses along to make shaping/bending of the bar a breeze.

This works really well on softer curves. On tighter stuff, you probably have to get it bent closer to the final shape before you start welding.

Lots of pairs of vice grips can help.

It works much easier if the helmet/cheek/whatever is rigidly mounted to the workbench with clamps, magnets, or something heavy.

Also watch the end of your bar, don't let it go, and be concious of where you're taking it! The heat from welding is enough that 16-18" of 1/4" bar will start to droop under it's own weight and bend in ways that will not make you happy.

And here is a Fifth Century (SCA) Helmet with extended mounting-tabs of flattened bar-ends, though the bargrill frame is not formed to parallel the cheekpiece edges. From a few pages back. Aldric really designed his bargrill very well.

Here's one more way. You can drill holes in your cheek plates and insert the bars, and weld on the inside. This creates a pretty clean look, at least I think so. This photo was taken pre-cleanup, so you can see a bit of the heat markings, but those go right away of course.

Galfrid atte grene wrote:Here's one more way. You can drill holes in your cheek plates and insert the bars, and weld on the inside. This creates a pretty clean look, at least I think so. This photo was taken pre-cleanup, so you can see a bit of the heat markings, but those go right away of course.

That looks really sweet! Did you shape the bar ends at all as they go through the cheeks, or just project 5mm or so and weld around them?

I ground the ends flat until they just barely protruded, then welded.

That is very neat, jolly well done.
Dang good idea.

I like to weld a 1/4" bar along the edge of the helm.
Like this:

http://www.esmeraldaofthelakes.com/gallery.aspx?album=albums/Cynaguan_Coronet_October_2007 -- IvanIS linked to this one.

Esmeralda's numerous pages of pics contain numerous nice clear shots of assorted bargrill fastening schemes, primarily riveted/framed designs. Also some fun nonbargrill stuff on at least one Dark Ages hat with brass eyebrows and appliqué panels. Explore.