attaching an aventail?

[otsdarva267]

Hello there AA people
so I have this lovely bascinet I snagged from Murdock, padded strapped and ready roll
I fought once in it at the zombie tournament here in Ansteorra right before Halloween, it preformed most admirably, but I'l cut to the chase
I just received this amazing stainless aventail from Master Knuut, and I have my leather liner ready, but here's the real question
how do I get the aventail on there without using extra rings, I was hoping to just sew it on using heavy waxed linen cord but I have no idea where to start!
il post some photos when my camera isn't being temperamental.
thanks y'all!

[Konstantin the Red]

Pending your photos: you do have a camail strap to sew the mail onto? Fitted onto the vervelles, and all?

Either the linen thread you describe, or stitching awl nylon thread, or artificial sinew, thinned/peeled down if necessary, will do the job handsomely.

For a neat job, use an edge groover to delineate your stitch-line. That groove will also make sewing easier because you're dealing with less thickness. Sinks the stitches down into the leather for a smooth appearance and feel, very nice on a hat and leaves the stitching less vulnerable to wear. Benefits all round.

If you stitch with sinew in any width, use a stab awl to make the stitch holes, spacing them with a pouncing wheel after making the stitch line with an edge groover. The awl punches diamond shaped holes like <>, distinctly longer along one dimension than the other. Doesn't look like the holes a thonging chisel leaves, which are rectangular, quite [], and far more modern-style. Slant your stab awl holes too, to prevent your leather tearing along the dotted line. Angle the holes about like / / / / etc. Sew with a two-thread saddle stitch for strength and redundancy.

First thing you do to the mail is to trim away excess from the "turtleneck" of the center until you have established your temple triangles: you end up trimming away a piece about like a collar band, and also a rectangle to open for the face, which will be some rows deeper than that collar band like scrap. Between these two cutaway portions the two temple triangles emerge, tall enough to fit to the camail strap's terminal doglegs that rise to the general area of the temples and the upper corners of your face opening -- at least, as high as your eyes.
The temple triangles of the camail should be near enough to front dead center that any space between the two of them at your chin is unlikely to droop.

If you've got a movable visor, it seems the best way to have the temple triangles is as right triangles, vertical leg forwards, hypotenuse to rear, and the distance between the vertical legs that your face looks out of being about the distance between your cheekbones, so it looks like the triangles will rise partly in front of your eyes. It also looks like they're on backwards at first, but bear with me. Now comes the clever part: these triangles get rocked back to fit up against the strap doglegs, to be stitched into place there. Stretching or compression of the mail links do not apply to the temple triangles: just sew these into place straight. You'll see why this is when you get to stitching this part -- you're working along the non-resilient direction of the mail fabric. No fiddle factor there. All this gives just the right tension to that bit of mail that rides upon your chin and lives beneath your lower lip. Again, this is really only important with a movable visor -- you didn't mention whether it's mobile or fixed, I believe? For a fixed bargrill, the method gets modified a little depending on desired effect, actual location of bottom edge bar, and such. Covering some of the bargrill's expanse becomes an option. Please advise.

Lay the trimmed camail on a table, and begin sewing the strap on from the center back, arraying the links densely enough on either side to line up the camail's temple triangles fairly well with the camail strap doglegs that rise to near the top of the face opening from the general altitude of the main part of the strap. The links get packed together a little. It's good practice to use a separate stitch run on either half, or break this into even smaller segments around the strap, so that failure of one sewn segment does not unravel all of the camail attachment -- not likely with saddle-stitching the mail on, but how annoying should it occur.

[otsdarva267]

god, that took forever
Konstantin the Red I am not going to lie, half of that went right over my head the first few times I read it
and trimming the mail sounds intimidating, having to pick apart this beautiful piece, well you gotta do what you gotta do....

[otsdarva267]

and here are the last two photos

[Adamo]

I've included two quick photos of how the welded stainless aventail is attached to my new bascinet. These photos and Konstantin's text should give you a pretty good handle on how to trim the mail. Note the "grain" of the mail in the front.

Basically, you take a trapezoid out of the back and take a rectangle out of the front. Stretch the top of the two triangles you are left with to either side and stitch the whole thing to your leather strap.





Adam

[Konstantin the Red]

And dammit, I don't think my advice is going to really work. The doglegs for his temple triangles are so short they're more cheek triangles. There's no scope there to do that back-tipping number I was talking about and Adamo's pictures show the result of. See how Adamo's triangles go way up higher than yours, Ots? And do you see how his linkrows are gently bent upwards, and how tightly the forward edges of the triangles, right there along the V line, are pulled, and the comparative relaxation of the mail farther back in the triangles -- easiest to see in the front view?

And there was room on the helmet to do that, too -- I was assuming the doglegs went up that far. The visor won't give a lot of trouble, for it is a center-hinge. Temple-hinged ones would take some more bother to not jam on tall temple triangles. We're gonna need to re-think some. I'd've liked three more inches' height to each dogleg, getting the camail strap ends up to where the face opening starts to curve over. That is a sweet basc indeed, all vervelles included and drilled for sewing in a period cloth liner!

So would your visor, on and closed, have trouble fitting with taller triangles? Bargrills at least can be easily adjusted to make more room with a little bending.

I'd've said, "Hey, can't I have some more vervelles going up either side? Why did you quit so low, and not stretch those three out farther up, straddling that chinstrap rivet right there? Something to do with how the visor sits?" (Doing this would mean either cutting out another camail strap -- it can be constructed of more than one piece of leather -- or sewing new, longer doglegs onto the present strap.)

Had those three vervelles been spaced out along the strap doglegs the same spacing the others are on the main strap body, your doglegs would have come out at least two inches taller, and gotten a lot closer to being workable the way I was talking about. At worst, you might have wanted to add four vervelles more, total. Maybe as few as two, or none.

Well, if you have a power drill and a file, you can make brass vervelles yourself to perfectly match the vervelles he used. And if his vervelles are built from large brass cotter pins, you don't even need the electric drill. Just file the eye ends of brass cotter pins that you get to match the others -- they look like they are faceted, after the example of the famous N Italian bascinet of c. 1390 with a camail, in Churburg Armory I think? It's in AAOTMK, p. 70.

I kind of suspect these are not cotter pin vervelles, though -- the camail strap vervelle holes are round, and cotter pin vervelles fit neatest into vertically rather oblong holes. (Made with two punch-strokes per hole, punchings overlapping. Don't even really need to trim any leftover cusps out of the holes; they disappear.)