The Armour Archive

They are just begging to be gold plated.

Chris Gilman wrote:They are just begging to be gold plated.

I don't understand why everyone wants them to be gold plated. I would think that keeping them low key and letting the detail speak for it's self would give the over all composition a much better appearance. Just my $.02

Chris, I know how the original statue looks but is anything getting gilded? If not, it would make the besegews look worse, not better. Also, this seems to be an interpretation of the statue, not a replica.

Mac wrote:

Can we talk about how similar the hole in the center of this besagew looks to the non-round, ragged-edged holes we were trying to understand in period armor? Was that in this thread or another one?

Maybe a lot of the weirdness of those punched(?) holes was due to the rough surface finishing done around/to them...

That hole does look a bit ratty. I can't remember its history, because much of it happened nearly ten years ago... but I think I have had a rivet in there at some point and have punched it out.

The more I think about the irregular holes we were looking at in the other thread, and the more I compare them to other holes I have seen, the more I think that local delamination of the metal was the culprit.

Mac

Friethjoph wrote:Would you do us a favor and show us off these gorgeous pieces together with the rest of the already polished armor? I for my would love to see them in the same lighting as the harness and shoulders, showing off how much the work in these two pieces makes them look just right for them.

I answer with hearing and obeying.



I took a more general pic, but the focus was bad. I'll post something later.

Mac

Chris Gilman wrote:They are just begging to be gold plated.

The decision of gilding is that we are going to gild....
--buckles
--knuckles
--strap plates
--hinges
--rivets
--turning pins
--bevor catch

All else will be black. It certainly won't be a flashy as the statue, but I think it will look nice.

Mac

Wow. That besagew sure looks pretty, pinned to the lapel where it belongs.
Excellent.

The first thing I did today was to grind the edge of the helmet a bit to remove a couple of high spots. Then I marked the hem line on the inside.



The area in green gets ground away to make the corner smooth and even once the hem is turned.



The overlapping edge of the visor needed to have the line extended.



The edge of the skull got turned out over the heel of the anvil. This is a very loud operation, even with fresh earplugs. It would have been quieter but less convenient to do it hot.



This is as far as I will turn it cold.



The visor got the same treatment.



The edges are pretty thick, and I will be thinning them out. I may forge them out a bit hot, or I may just grind them. I'm going to think about it over lunch.

Mac

Will you be doing a normal hem on the bottom of the sallet or something different? A small square hem would look great and tie in nicely with the bevor and pauldrons.

Ever heard of the Stendahl Syndrome? The picture above with the besagews gives me that.

Shiny! Yes, that is the same polish on both parts! Your work payed off... a pitty that it will be somewhat hidden under the coloration job.

Mac wrote:That hole does look a bit ratty. I can't remember its history, because much of it happened nearly ten years ago... but I think I have had a rivet in there at some point and have punched it out.

The more I think about the irregular holes we were looking at in the other thread, and the more I compare them to other holes I have seen, the more I think that local delamination of the metal was the culprit.

Mac

Maybe that's what's going on. A lot of armor pieces (then as now) probably had "temporary" rivets banged in during work and then punched out before final assembly. These irregular holes may just be the result of that procedure (possibly a number of such procedures per hole, in fact). I suppose they didn't have Clecos and nuts and bolts were likely more bother than a rivet.


Also, I agree with everyone else: those besagews are bananas.

I decided to grind a taper on the edge, rather than forging one. Forging is probably easier to control, but my elbows aren't up to it today. This pic did not end up in focus... sorry.



To turned the edge down hot over this fluting stake an inch or so at a time....



...and then finished up with a little crosspeen on this stake. Again, the work was hot.



Near the crest of the visor, I had to switch to this rail to make use of the corners.



This is what the finished hem looks like in section. There was a call for square hems by Ungman, but I didn't feel confident enough that I could pull that off without screwing up.... and really, it's too late in the project to take unnecessary risks.... so round hems they are.



Everything went smoothly enough.




The traditional trouble spot at the end of the tail behaved its self. I rounded the point of the flair off a bit so the metal would not pile up too much here, and that worked OK. I had one little wave, and that was about a slip up when I was grinding the thickness of the flair. Had I forged the thickness, rather than grinding it, this would (probably) not have happened.



There was a bit of a discrepancy where the visor hems met the skull hems. I riveted the visor on temporarily and adjusted that with the torch and a hammer. You can see tsome stray hammer marks quite clearly here. They are shallow, and will grind away without much trouble.



I think the proportions look pretty good.



There is a bit more to do on the helmet before I heat treat it. I need to make up the catch, and I need to fix a small spot on the crest that's not as sharp as the rest.

Mac

Gerhard von Liebau wrote:

Mac wrote:I may or may not trim a bit more off the tail before I hem it. We'll see how I feel about it in the morning.

I have to admit my instinctive thought was "he cut too much." Perhaps the angle of your photos is making it look like that? If not, I can't imagine you'd need to cut any more off, especially if you're going to roll those edges! The current silhouette looks very nice for a "short" tail.

-Gerhard

I took your judgment to heart and cut no more off the tail.

Mac

Well Mac, seeing how you finished off the rolled edges is very inspiring! I think the shape turned out great. Cheers!

-Gerhard

Thanks, Gerhard!

Mac

I'm getting ready to put the holes in the helmet for the lining etc., and am a bit stuck on how to handle the chinstrap. It's clear enough how they they must have been attached in Italian sallets... (a split strap attaching to the two rivets below the lining strip)



...but it's not at all obvious how the Germans dealt. I've started a thread on the subject here viewtopic.php?f=1&t=184980

Mac

Thanks for taking so much time to document your work and talk about your choices, Mac.

How was the lower back of the neck protected in this style when the salet was tipped down? As a fourteenth-century guy, I expect to see at least one layer of steel there (even if our idea of protecting the spine with mail has its own limits). Did they wear a collar of mail under the bevor? "Cover as your horses come together and deliver a horizontal blow to the back of the neck as you pass them" is an old trick.

Sean M wrote: How was the lower back of the neck protected in this style when the salet was tipped down?

Tipped down in front?... ie. up in back? It's not so good that way, really. That's just part of the sallet trade off. It may be what drives the more droop tailed sallets and the ones with articulated tails.

Sean M wrote: Did they wear a collar of mail under the bevor?

A mail standard was pretty normal with a sallet. Some bevors had mail "straps",https://www.pinterest.com/tbiliter/bevo ... rotection/
Here is an example of such a bevor worn without a standard, but I don't think he is to be taken as a well armed guy.



Mac

Yesterday, I fixed a couple of little spots on the helmet crest that were not sharp enough. I heated them up and then used a fluting stake and the helmet's own mass to push them out a bit so they could be sharpened up.

I then went on to lay out the lining holes. Most of the helmets in my study pics have four rivets on each side behind the visor, and two on each side under the visor. I felt that I really wanted three on each side under the visor, and adjusted all the spacings to accommodate. that. This decision to do something a bit atypical will come to give me some trouble, but more on that later.

The spacings were laid out with a sharpie pen and a compass, and the locations deeply center punched for drilling.



It's pretty clear from the images over on the "chinstrap" thread viewtopic.php?f=1&t=184980 that German sallets usually have "Y" shaped straps, and the ends of them are attached to adjacent lining rivets.

The most obvious rivets are the two just behind the visor. When I set it up this way with temporary straps I find that it seems a bit far back. It's comfortable when the helmet is tipped back, but the strap bears heavily on my throat when the helmet is tipped forward.



Moving the leather forward to the next pair of rivets seemed to put the strap too far forward. When the helmet was tipped back, the seemed a bit tight. When the helmet was tipped froward, the strap seemed like it might be loose enough to get over my chin.



When I spread the legs of the straps out to leave a rivet in between, the overall location seemed good but I felt that the changing tensions of the two legs was a bit extreme. When the helmet was tipped back, the forward leg was quite loose. When the helmet was tipped forward, the back leg was loose. It also seemed to want to entangle my ears.



When I attached both legs of the straps to the hole just behind the visor, the results were pretty comfortable. This felt like a good compromise location for both helmet positions. The only problem is that it does not use a "Y" strap like we see in most examples.



I think that the underlying problem was my choice of hole spacing. If I had gone with two rivets under the visor, it would have opened up the spacing of the rivets. This would have put the obvious pair right in the "sweet spot". It seems like I have two options. The first is to use only one rivet on each side. This will work OK, but it's not the typical thing... although we do have this example.



The other is to make additional holes below the lining strip to secure the strap. This is typical in Italian sallets...



...but not unheard of on more Germanic examples. This particular specimen seems to have more than one strapping solution at one time or another.



I'm going to think about this a bit before I commit to drilling any more holes.

Mac

Would it help to make an asymmetric Y on the strap to offset it to the sweet spot?

Ungman wrote:Would it help to make an asymmetric Y on the strap to offset it to the sweet spot?

The temporary straps I used have a number of holes up where you can't see them, and I have used the ones that make the straps lay the nicest for each of the test configurations.

Changing the lengths of the legs of the strap helps to get them loaded more or less evenly, but it doesn't alter the basic geometry. What matters most is where the attachment points are with respect of the center of rotation of the helmet on the head.

Mac

I marked out where I would put the additional holes if I were going to "go Italian" on the chinstrap, but then got cold feet. The thing I don't like about that solution, is that it puts the attachments on the flair of the helmet. That will force the leather to pull back on its washers. The Italian sallets are more straight sided below the ears. That makes the lower strap mounting much more viable mechanically.

The German(?) helmet I posted above with the rivets below the lining strip is really rather straight sided there. I should have checked this view out earlier...

ref_arm_1821

It looks like there was a good reason why the Germans mounted their chinstraps where they did. They put them in the lowest place where the helmet was still more or less parallel sided, and thus avoided unnecessarily stressing their leather.
I guess I will take this image as my guide and use only one rivet for each of the straps.



Mac

It might make it more comfy to move the buckle away from the pit of the throat and more to the side of the face, but i figure you already thought of that. I know the straps are temporary and can be adjusted.

Jiri Klepac made me one in the German style and put two rivets as low as he could, as you said. One is visible, the other a flush rivet hidden under the visor. Its a copy of CH S62 attributed to Jorg Wagner of Innsbruck. 1480-1485.

Otto von Teich wrote:Jiri Klepac made me one in the German style and put two rivets as low as he could, as you said. One is visible, the other a flush rivet hidden under the visor. Its a copy of CH S62 attributed to Jorg Wagner of Innsbruck. 1480-1485.

I'll have to take a look at that. I'm pretty sure of what I am going to do, but then again I might change my mind.

Mac

The helmet is all ready for the heat treating tomorrow. The pivots have been drilled out to 1/4", and so had the hole for the visor catch. I have cleaned up a couple of rough places in the corners of the eye slit; cheap insurance. The two loops of wire that go straight up are for lowering it into the kiln. This could be done with one loop since it only has to work while it is cold, but two loops will make it more stable and less fussy.



There are three loops of wire in the back for lifting the helmet out of the kiln. I used three, because they have to bear the weight while hot. They are coming out of the back so that the helmet will hang straight down when I pull it out of the kiln. This way it will enter the quench smoothly and sink immediately.



Mac

Mac,
That's a terrible design for a chin strap!

I thought I would go for a sort of Mad Max look.

Mac

Mac, what shape are you starting with for your straps? I think I might have an idea but I'd like to see a picture or sketch first if I could.

Do you mean the "Y" straps, or the new wire ones I'm going to put on Chris's armor?

I have not really settled on the "perfect" shape for "Y" straps, but I typically start with a narrow triangle of leather. Sometimes I have the sides of the neck in just below the split, but they look OK even if I don't.

Mac

I almost think it would be a good idea to start with a large piece of leather rather than strips of anything. Then from there take the shape out of that. I believe if you do that, you'll get rid of the weird stresses and pulling issues that you're having now.

Once a split strap is stretched in a bit, it takes on the shape it needs and lays smooth. You can cut them that shape ab initio, but it's wasteful of leather.

Mac

Mac wrote:Once a split strap is stretched in a bit, it takes on the shape it needs and lays smooth. You can cut them that shape ab initio, but it's wasteful of leather.

Mac

I have tried it both ways and found Mac's comment to be exactly right.
When it is real buff from Clayton's I am pretty mindful of the waste