The Armour Archive

After Pennsic, I am starting back to fighting. I was cleared by my doctor as long as I use good protection for my neck. I have a decent gorget, but I also want to put a mail aventail and a padded one underneath of that. It sounds like over kill a little, I ma just wary.
My newest helmet is still a little loose and was hoping to do something like a coif/aventail hood thing so that I had the extra level of protection...
Any ideas? Any patterns out there?

The pattern is really that of a hood, and hoods can be as simple as folded over and stitched down the back and at the front of the cowl under the face hole. Any hood layout with a rounded back and top will suit this job. Hood cowl goes out from underneath the helmet, mail drape can get some individual-stitch fastening down to keep liner and mail together -- doesn't need a lot of this, nor necessarily down at the hem of the drape and the liner-piece either. Nylon leather-thread or colored artificial sinew.

An arming-cap with a shoulder cowl added on -- a goodsized cone stuck on the bottom -- will make what you want. Arming-caps/coifs tend to be of three pieces, two sides that are rounded-off more or less rectangular, with some cut away for the edge of the face, plus a center stripe forehead to nape of neck -- like a NASA Snoopy hat.

If you're still having trouble visualizing this, any sewing-maven in your Barony can make you one. And a few arming-caps for sweatcatchers you can launder easy.

I have a decent gorget, but I also want to put a mail aventail and a padded one underneath of that.

You'll get better results with the gorget under, directly on your neck, and the quilted liner over the gorget, then your camail. Then you could still turn your head and not disarrange anything. Particularly with a bascinet...? Don't recall if that's your helm or not.

Yep, I have an SS bascinet. It has a layer of foam bonded to it (I bought it that way used) It rings a little so the foam cuts that a tad. I want to put the camail on it to reduce it more and with the padded aventail to reduce the possibilities of a stick getting anywhere near my neck. I had two levels fused and am a little antsy about that. The helm bottom is about 1 1/2 - 2 inches below the jaw line. Without the aventail and camail it is legal, I just want an added level of protection. I did a search and someone suggested hose in the aventail. I am thinking more like stiff padding in the quilting especially in the rear. I haven't been hit much in the front in that area and the COP I have is pretty protective in the upper chest and lower neck.

I need to check with my local seamstresses. I can sew but I stink with cloth patterns.

Sounds really like you've about got it knocked -- and more so than you think right now!

Yeah, I read in others of your postings about the cervical surgery -- welcome back to the game of sticks.

I get the impression that the gorget in there should do everything you absolutely need to do, especially with the shelter of the basc coming down far enough on you, so your situation is excellent since it's hard to strike the gorget at all -- and you want a quilted liner as well, which throws on a serving of gravy on top of 'most everything. An arming-cote with a standing stiff collar, outside the gorget -- such a collar can easily bolster things 3/4 of the way around your neck at least.

Quilted liners can get, as mentioned, strategic reinforcing bits of one sort or another slipped in -- overlapping rigid (plate or plastic) lames, for instance. If you're really antsy enough to go beyond stiff, that is -- we're getting into the realm of belt and two pair suspenders here... A knight in Atenvelt who really had to do this one for cervical reasons eventually went great-bascinet, to the awe and wonder of contemporary Atenveltans. It was the very first one most of them had seen, possibly the first fielded in the Society.

And that camail probably will quite deaden the ring. Curvy welded-up hats are the type most likely to be bells, and from here it looks like the previous owner was trying to do something about that too. Sorbothane and spray truck bed liner have good report. And it's definitely the helmet skull and not the grill?

It may be the grill. When the grill is struck it rings as well as the skull. It is an older Ice Falcon Helm. My guess is that if I take the rivets out of the grill and loosen them, some of the ring will dissipate.

You are probably looking for something like this:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/177944322/ ... h-aventail

The grill test is hit the helm hard enough on the skull to ring it, likely with you inside to check, and touch a fingertip to the grill. If the ring stops, it's all the grill. Wiring a camail to any part of a fixed grill often dissipates the ringing. The mail behaves as a buzzer and soaks up the sound energy. You can even get clever enough to wire mail temple triangles up the sides of the grill, suspending the camail itself in the usual traditional fashion with the strap and retaining cord or wire, and sketch the appearance of a camail that in a basc with a movable visor would ride, with a liner, on your cheeks and chin, looking more or less like \T/.

In several ways the least problematic layout of the camail strap and its vervelle line for a project like this is the horizontal strap section around the lower edge of the helmet skull, then vertical risers right at the sides of the face opening all the way up to or close to the top of the opening. Depending on the exact positioning of the vervelle holes, you may have to deal with the extra thickness of your grill's rivet tabs -- or just make sure to miss them. The temple triangles cover a little bit of the grillwork and their forward edges slope down pretty steeply, generally towards the corners of your mouth, and your mail at the chin can lap up over the fixed grill by a linkrow or three over the bottom bars. Doesn't have to stop at the bottom bar of the grill's what I'm saying.

Butted links are a bit vulnerable there, laid directly on something hard like that; they can get clobbered. Most of us think the extra effort at being artful would be worth the bit more maintenance. Wiring the mail on, think in individual stitches of fine wire, tiny loops twisted, rather than running spirals of wire mostly. Hide 'em within the area of the mail, and not quite out at its edges.

The helmet liner is close to what I need, but I don't need that much padding on the "coif" section.
Konstantin- My plan is to get a SS riveted aventail from jestyr. I have a welded one on my cervelliere, but it needs to stay where it is... I will have to give the test a try.

Would a pic of this basc save about 1K words? Particularly I wanna look at the grill and figure what a camail and vervelle layout like I was talking about would really look like. {ETA: I did take a look at some pages of Icefalcon Armory's bascinets, Phrygians and Dark Ages hats and look forward to seeing, okay, just how old is "old" for Ice's basc designs.}

I've said before I like an odd number of vervelles, to place one at center back and spread out from that. Shape of the basc would suggest the vervelle type -- low, round bascs more often go with the earlier tunnel type and the pointy supersonic ones with the posts.

Johann Lederer wrote:After Pennsic, I am starting back to fighting. I was cleared by my doctor as long as I use good protection for my neck. I have a decent gorget, but I also want to put a mail aventail and a padded one underneath of that. It sounds like over kill a little, I ma just wary.
My newest helmet is still a little loose and was hoping to do something like a coif/aventail hood thing so that I had the extra level of protection...
Any ideas? Any patterns out there?

I was unable to locate a pattern online, so I developed one here:

Making a Quilted Aventail

Rodney wrote:

Johann Lederer wrote:After Pennsic, I am starting back to fighting. I was cleared by my doctor as long as I use good protection for my neck. I have a decent gorget, but I also want to put a mail aventail and a padded one underneath of that. It sounds like over kill a little, I ma just wary.
My newest helmet is still a little loose and was hoping to do something like a coif/aventail hood thing so that I had the extra level of protection...
Any ideas? Any patterns out there?

I was unable to locate a pattern online, so I developed one here:

Making a Quilted Aventail

Nice! You make it look simple!