great helm photo

[serferdude]

This is the helm I am working on concerning the top question I posted earlier. I still have a lot to do but the top is my main obstacle now. I have a forge so I'm going to try to bend the edge at an orange heat to try to avoid the crinkles. My model is the effigy of William de Lanvalei at
>www.themcs.org< It can be viewed by clicking on history, then "headgear worn by knights...", and is the third one down.
I used five plates as seen on one of the original helms on another site because I have no idea how the helm in the effigy was constructed. Thanks for all advise and I hope the link to the photo works.

http://S1001.photobucket.com/albums/af139/Bshep83

[Konstantin the Red]

Yep, link's good.

Okay, so your barrelhelm is an earlyish form with a large top. An exterior-fit is right for this era of barrelhelm. The rectangular breaths are also good; you may want twice as many. Later barrels and greats might have the right side more ventilated than the left, but the earlier models didn't differentiate between the sides. In the Prankh helm, they mounted a wrapper plate in front of the ventail plate as a reinforcement. Effective, but it increased its weight.

Working it down hot should practically eliminate any problems you encountered with your top cap. Should some wrinkles begin to develop, do a run around the edge of flattening all the waves down again.

I've poked around http://www.themcs.org/ to see if I might find William de Lanvalei's image, but no luck so far in trying to work from your description. Perhaps a direct link via that URL button at top right?

[Milan H]

Here is the pic i think he is referring to.

http://www.themcs.org/armour/helms/Walkern%20St%20Mary%20William%20de%20Lanvalei%201217%20head%20153.jpg

Cheers!

[Konstantin the Red]

Dear me, I'm still such a duffer. Thanks much, Milan. {Then I tried actually following the directions... first History, then Headgear Worn By Knights Pictoral Timeline, found just below the picture of the very purple gentleman...}

Serferdude, see the slight dishing to the top cap I was talking about elsewhere?

[serferdude]

Alright, I'm going to stop before I have a conniption fit and start throwing things. I dished the top in a hollowed out stump, ok so far. But then I heated the top and began hammering the flange over and the wrinkles appeared again. I hammered down that wrinkle and another, sometimes two, popped up about an inch or two away. I finally got the flange down to a 45 degree angle, but as I started bending it to a ninety degree angle the wrinkles reappeared. I heated half the top in my gas forge with the same problem reoccuring, and then switched to a mapp torch to heat a smaller area but it kept happening. Do I heat and draw the wrinkles down toward the edge? This would thin it yes? That's ok by me if that's the way it was done, I would rather stay away from modern methods and techniques as much as possible. I saw a drawing of an actual medieval helm that seemed to depict two notches cut out on the sides, and I assumed they were for relieving the stresses, but I'll be doggoned if I can remember where I saw it. I don't know for a fact that's what they were for, but it like intentional stock removal to me.

[Milan H]

Can you post a pic of your stake and the hammer you are using? Also what your piece looks like? This is a very subjective process, so the more pics the better!

Remember, you are trying to make the metal <i>thicker</i> at the edge. Wrinkles will happen, so you need to keep it hot while you work it together.

As mentioned, this is an advanced technique. Check out Eric Dubes video on raising a Sallet... http://www.youtube.com/user/SgtViktor#p ... uuC4Bq4Y2U

At 00:58 you will see where he has a bunch of wrinkles, and his work to hammer them out. Notice the shape of his hammer? A wide narrow face, which is typical for raising. Even a very skilled armorer has these issues, and hates dealing with them!

Hope that helps and that people more skilled at this technique than i chime in. Again post pics of your progress so we can offer better advice!!

Cheers!

[Konstantin the Red]

Milan is describing the rectangular face of the raising hammer -- the sort of thing you´d get from grinding the wedge edge off a crosspein until it was flat, or from grinding the adzelike edge off a bricklayers' hammer. A hammer face that looks like [], only this sketch should be turned ninety degrees to a horizontal alignment. The face is not absolutely flat, but very slightly rounded, and all edges and corners radiused to keep from marking your metal up. Very smooth if not polished for the face.

Sounds to me like you're now getting halfway to where you want to go -- those other, followon wrinkles you got were about what happens anyway.

As somebody neatly put it in the buckler thread, you're still dealing with "too much circumference inside your circumference" and what you have to do is push the metal together some more, changing breadth to thickness.

You're on the right track. Persevere, keeping with the hammerstrokes intended to push and knead the metal together, then together, then together some more. Slow, but effective.

[serferdude]

Are you saying let the folds overlap and hammer them together, as in forge welding? I thought about cutting a new piece and trying to upset the entire edge to increase the thickness, but I don't know if I could actually accomplish that. Seems like with this thin stock it would just fold over instead of being driven back into itself. Anyway, I found the photo and diagram of an actual medieval helm I have been looking for that shows the top with two sections cut out, presumably to relieve the stresses and avoid the wrinkles. (it's the diagram of the second helm down, Madeln, I think) Also, after looking at the helm photos at this same site it looks like the helm plates on some of the others curve inward about forty-five degrees at the very top to meet the top plate edge which curves down about forty-five degrees. I was able to get the edge of my plate to a 45 degree angle without the wrinkles. It's when I tried to hammer it on down to 90 degrees that the wrinkles reappeared. I don't think I want to try to alter the top plates of my helm so I'm thinking I might try to cut out two notches like in the photo. If there's a genuine precedent for this technique I'm ok with it, but if not, then back to work with the hammer.

[Konstantin the Red]

No, do not overlap. You sort of noodge the metal, in the course of beating those annoying ripples flat.

[Konstantin the Red]

From JalopyJournal, a thread about shrinking (raising) metal in a stump, which he built from stacked discs of plywood (news to me). Numerous pics. Thread is about as long as an anaconda's backbone. A great many pics are of auto sheet-metal, but the ones of particular interest to you are early in the thread. I scrolled through it to the bottom, and there are some real nuggets of metalshaping info hidden in there, too numerous to.

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=294590&showall=1

It won't be quite as easy for us because we use thicker metal, but the principles are all the same.

[knitebee]

if a wrinkle is moving on you heat a smaller area and heat it hotter so that the metal at the wrinkle you are working can be compressed down and the force not transfered further allong the metal to another spot.


heres a crappy drawing showing the pop can top wrinkles. the red lines are just a lousy attempt to shade to look 3d, the blue basically outlines the wrinkle where its standing up to far. The green is where you want to hit with the hammer. Personaly I hit at an angle for such areas, so that the force goes both in and towards the edge, it just seems to work better and faster for me that way. Only try to flatten out a little at a time, work an 1/8" of the top fo the wrinkle out, then when thats good do a little more, do it in stages, I'd bet that your biggest issue is trying to move to much at once, take little bites.

[raito]

You guys realize that you're talking about raising, right? You're taking the longer circumference of the top cap and skrinking it down so that it fits the body of the helm. Raising. I'm occasionally amused that guys who think raising is hard have no problems putting caps on barrel helms.

[Konstantin the Red]

Raito, this is just Serferdude's first try at a top cap and at raising, so he's learning the usual set of lessons. We're just trying to help walk him through the process.