The Armour Archive

Unfortunately, The Stanislav project is on hold till monday - family matters got in the way of spending the weekend at work)

Meanwhile - made a small helmet for a girl that will enter Female Tourney Triatlon at The Battle Of The Nations come this may.
1.5 mm thick st45 steel. Those torney fellas want their helmets very snug and not pointy, and also as light as possible. The "finish" is a quick and dirty job: I hit the helmet with a 60-grit flap disc, then buffed it up some on a felt wheel impregnated with GOI polishing compound(I have no idea what grit it is - it`s green, if that helps) and finished that with a gray scotchbrite pad stuck to a velcro pad like this http://tool-land.ru/image/shlifovalnye-nasadki9.jpg mounted onto an electric motor.

The nasal being so small, I decided to make it a squished/raised piece instead of a welded job we usually do



It`s a first one-piece nasal for me, but it was quicker to make than a welded one, so I guess I`ll be making them like this from now on.

Fitted the visor I made to the helmet scull. The fit is so-so, unfortunately. It will get better when an aventail is mounted, because the visor will attach to it with that hook welded in on the inside, but still...

Also figured out Google Photos, so will be editing my previous messages with photos visible for everyone, including forum guests.

Is this the visor you are reproducing?

PDF for Goll # 1502

Pinterest Search for Ref_arm_1502

Yes. Here, we call them "the six eyes visor" ))

These photos should help tremendously in the future. Make oculars lower, change the profile, make the chin longer etc...
I have only seen this photo before https://www.pinterest.com/pin/513973376199659487/

The current visor has to go.

Well, these few weeks have been busy, what with Battle of the Nations drawing near and whatnot.

Still, I`ve got news on The Stanislav bascinet project. While I had to rush it towards the end to meet the deadline, it came out somewhat better than I expected, though definately much, much worse than what Mr. Prosek has been showing us(no wonder here - the man is extremely talented and experienced).

So, let`s start with our Build-Along, now shall we?

First, I cut the parts out, bent the lower one into a tube, welded it on the inside, cleaned the oxidation on the outside, welded there and then used a flap disc on an angle grinder to get rid of the weld bead.





Then, I used a depression on the edge of a tree stump and a heavy round-faced hammer to bend the halves of the top into half-cones. I then rounded the tips on the edge of my smaller mushroom stake and trimmed the excess away




After that, I welded the round-tipped cone inside and out







Now I had to remove at least some of the weld bead material from the inside. I ended up using a grinding wheel mounted on a pneumatic drill and finished it off with a small grinding wheel from Dremel, mounted in the same drill(`cause I don`t have a Dremel )
The result is lacking, and I did not grind most of the weld flush - I just got rid of sharp discontinuities between the weld and the metal around it. Still, made shaping the tip much easier.









Then I welded the top to the bottom on the inside.
The bead is mostly flat(It`s the best I`ve made so far) so I just marked several spots where I used the Dremel disc to smooth things out.



A close-up



Then I welded it on the outside





and ground the bead away flush.

Next post - hammer time!

First raising pass





Secont raising pass( also shaped the tip)



Third raising pass( some tweaking down, some to go)





Started raising the neck flare in(this is the part that gives me the most trouble every time...)








Heading for the brow



Right side done



The chalk halo is the line of max. width and the diagonal marks for future trimming.





Then I got carried avey and kinda forgot to take pictures of shaping the left side and making the bevor...

Here starting to fit the bevor to the helmet scull





Mac tells us that to fit a visor to its helmet scull, we need to affix it so it cannot move. I`m too lazy to rivet, so I used tack welding. It held up fine and was relatively easy to grind off later
















aaand done









Drilled the pilot holes for bolts and verveille\cotter pin hold-downs. The client wants to be able to remove the plow bevor pretty much on a whim, and the helmet is intended for SCA fighting, so had to do it on each side.







Have to tweak the left side a tad more...


Took the plow off of the helmet



View from the inside





bottom line needs love and care...



Still the top is a bit forced





Made some test verveilles. Drilled a 3 mm hole through a piece of 8 mm round bar stock, mounted it into a drill, mounted the drill into a vice, turned it on and hit the spinning rod with a cut-off disc on an angle grinder. Not too pretty, but does the trick...



Also started on the grill and klopp



After a bit of fussing, it stays put when you stick it up )))



Made a prototype of the top of the plow\bottom of the grill interface.









Too flimsy...



made a sketch of what I have( in blue) and what I probably have to make( in red) Mulled over the possibility of welding a stiffener lip to the top of the plow, but decided to forego that later.



Welded some decorative wings to the bottom of the grille centerpiece - to beef up the area I`ll have to drill through. Then drilled a hole for the verveille(8 mm) drilled the cotter pin hole in the bottom face of the bar, and cut the slot for the cotter pin. I`ll weld the tip back and redrill\ream the cotter pin hole later. I will also trim the wings( the grill is subject to SCA regulations so the max. distance between horizontals will be 25 mm, so I`ll have to turn these winglets into decorations small enough they will not be concidered anything else than a decorative add-on.



So far so good





Made bolt\cotter pin assrmblies for plow pivots. Also made thin leather washers to stop the bolts from grinding on the inside of the helmet scull.













Pivots as they are on the inside



Welded horizontal bars to the center rod of the grill, mounted the assembled helmet in a vice and, using spot heating and pliers, bent the horizontals so they all touch either the helmet scull or the bevor.







Dressed up the front of the grill(here at Kretchett Armoury, we do not polish the back and the sides of rods in a grill - lest these surfaces catch light and temporarily blind the fighter).

Unfortunately, we had to rush the build and send the helmet, along with its slightly fatter older bro to Ilya Ivanov, our go-to guy for liners, in this partly cleaned state. Will grind/satin it when the client and his father(that`s who I made another helmet for) come back from an SCA convent in Sweden.

So the Stanislav and its bro will remain in this state for a while:























Pavel Gourkaloff a.k.a. Barbanegra, out[cold, needs sleep ].

This is just so cool.

I am dissatisfied with the interface between the bottom of the grill and the top of the bevor on The Stanislav bascinet. This cotter pin arrangement is too flimsy for my liking. Still, it`s what the client demanded.

For the next one, I`m thinking I`ll make something like this


With some sort of spring catch on the inside of the bevor - I remember Mac making a very neat thing like this on Toby`s grandbascinet bevor - the only thing sticking to the outside was the pushbutton on the right side of the bevor that one had to push sideways from right to left to open\close the visor(in the direction opposing the one most hits come from). This way, it`ll be highly unlikely for an opponent to knock the visor open mid-fight.

Thanks for the pics, looking good.

Feedback and critique, people! I needs feedback and critique! What to change, what to omit, different ways to make things etc... Remember - I`m a noob, I don`t know what I`m doing and I want to learn! I need your help!

I think the biggest thing that could be done to enhance the look of these is with the grill.
Take another look at Stanislav's version.

Note these things about his grill.
1. It appears monolithic (looks like one piece)
It probably was welded up like yours but after finishing it looks like one piece of steel.
2. The ribs taper from center to end. This looks elegant as well as putting the strength where needed.
3. The bevels and center crests along both the horizontal ribs as well as the vertical piece enhance the look.

Thanks, Tom! These are very good points! The current grills definately look sloppy.
How would you go about making it look monolitic? Pool thick welding beads and then file the excess metal away?

Also - when do you think would be good time to grind/file center bevels in? Before welding, in the process - weld one rib in, file the welds, put the bevel in, proceed to the next one - or after the grill is put together?

Also, I made it using 8mm mild steel square stock we had in shop and it looks solid enough, but just barely. I tried forging a tapered rib out of it, but it was too thin and pliable - maybe good enough for strolling around at a LH festival, but definately wouldn`t survive an HMB fight. I think that the grill should be made from something that would respond to heat-treatment...

So - use something thick enough to forge tapers in, preferably with carbon content 0f 0.4 - 0.45 %, and heat treat it. Then it would be possible to make the horizontals about 5-6 mm thick, and the center bar around 10 mm thick.

What say you?

Just to jump in, If i were trying to do a grill like that I would start by cutting out the rough shapes from 1/4" stock. Next I'd grind in the bevels into all the arms and weld them onto the center bar. Once they are welded I'd dress down the welds and then do my shaping over a ball stake or something along those lines with a dead blow mallet.

A dead blow mallet? Had to google it.

The gear geek in me is dancing on his tiptoes whimpering in excitement

The thing is, I tried paying more attention to the grill on Mr. Prosec`s helmet, like Tom B. suggested, and it now looks to me that the horizontals begin the same width as the center bar and then taper to about half of that. So they`re about 10 mm at the base and 5 mm at the end. Also, they seem to be the same thickness with the center bar.

Like this:



Am I seeing things that aren`t there?

Barbanegra wrote:First raising pass





Secont raising pass( also shaped the tip)



Third raising pass( some tweaking down, some to go)





Started raising the neck flare in(this is the part that gives me the most trouble every time...)








Heading for the brow



Right side done



The chalk halo is the line of max. width and the diagonal marks for future trimming.





Then I got carried avey and kinda forgot to take pictures of shaping the left side and making the bevor...

Here starting to fit the bevor to the helmet scull





Mac tells us that to fit a visor to its helmet scull, we need to affix it so it cannot move. I`m too lazy to rivet, so I used tack welding. It held up fine and was relatively easy to grind off later
















aaand done









Drilled the pilot holes for bolts and verveille\cotter pin hold-downs. The client wants to be able to remove the plow bevor pretty much on a whim, and the helmet is intended for SCA fighting, so had to do it on each side.







Have to tweak the left side a tad more...


Took the plow off of the helmet



View from the inside





bottom line needs love and care...



Still the top is a bit forced





Made some test verveilles. Drilled a 3 mm hole through a piece of 8 mm round bar stock, mounted it into a drill, mounted the drill into a vice, turned it on and hit the spinning rod with a cut-off disc on an angle grinder. Not too pretty, but does the trick...



Also started on the grill and klopp



After a bit of fussing, it stays put when you stick it up )))



Made a prototype of the top of the plow\bottom of the grill interface.









Too flimsy...



made a sketch of what I have( in blue) and what I probably have to make( in red) Mulled over the possibility of welding a stiffener lip to the top of the plow, but decided to forego that later.



Welded some decorative wings to the bottom of the grille centerpiece - to beef up the area I`ll have to drill through. Then drilled a hole for the verveille(8 mm) drilled the cotter pin hole in the bottom face of the bar, and cut the slot for the cotter pin. I`ll weld the tip back and redrill\ream the cotter pin hole later. I will also trim the wings( the grill is subject to SCA regulations so the max. distance between horizontals will be 25 mm, so I`ll have to turn these winglets into decorations small enough they will not be concidered anything else than a decorative add-on.



So far so good





Made bolt\cotter pin assrmblies for plow pivots. Also made thin leather washers to stop the bolts from grinding on the inside of the helmet scull.













Pivots as they are on the inside



Welded horizontal bars to the center rod of the grill, mounted the assembled helmet in a vice and, using spot heating and pliers, bent the horizontals so they all touch either the helmet scull or the bevor.







Dressed up the front of the grill(here at Kretchett Armoury, we do not polish the back and the sides of rods in a grill - lest these surfaces catch light and temporarily blind the fighter).

Unfortunately, we had to rush the build and send the helmet, along with its slightly fatter older bro to Ilya Ivanov, our go-to guy for liners, in this partly cleaned state. Will grind/satin it when the client and his father(that`s who I made another helmet for) come back from an SCA convent in Sweden.

So the Stanislav and its bro will remain in this state for a while:























Pavel Gourkaloff a.k.a. Barbanegra, out[cold, needs sleep ].

Holy cow I need you to make me one of these helmets

Wait until I make the Mk2 of the grill and, if you like what you see, drop me a PM ))))

What's the year/ location of that helmet appropriate for?

Sigurd Fjalarson wrote:What's the year/ location of that helmet appropriate for?

It is based mostly on this image (with the addition of the bevor plate)


It is from the Třeboň or Wittingau Altarpiece completed c 1380-1390, it was commissioned for the Augustinian Canons church of St. Aegidius, Trebon (in South Bohemian Region of Czech Republic).

Barbanegra wrote:
So - use something thick enough to forge tapers in, preferably with carbon content 0f 0.4 - 0.45 %, and heat treat it. Then it would be possible to make the horizontals about 5-6 mm thick, and the center bar around 10 mm thick.

I think this sounds like a good plan.
Knowing a bit about Staislav's work I bet he forged his bars to rough shape at least.

The wolf ribs grill is only found in two paintings, dating 1380 and 1450(the latter one shows a kastenbrust with a helmet scull that sorta\kinda resembles this one, but is, to me, different).
The plow bevor can be found, if I`m not mistaken, not earlier than 1390 or even 1400 on earlier great bascinets. But the helmet scull is from around 1400(the one in the 1380 painting is a different animal, at least to my eyes) or later. Cotter pins are obviously an anachronism, too...

But then again, almost nothing I make could be concidered period - helmets that are too large in curcumference, but not nearly tall\pointy enough, etc... The thing is, our (Kretchett Armoury, that is) clients are not reenactors but HMB fighters. All of them. In Russia, if you have an armour, you fight in it. And it`s full contact rebated steel fighting we are talking about. So people do not want period armour - they want sports gear that looks period-ish.

So with this helmet - you could use it in a kit that`s built around the 1380-1400-ish mark, I guess.
It should not be viewed as period. It`s an "optimization" for nowadays fighting - when one doesn`t quite wish to go with a grand bascinet - because they would most probably have to change almost all other pieces of their kit.

some pieces I`ve made recently:



oil blackened.

1.5 mm st45 steel(helmets), 0.8 mm st45 steel - spaulders

also been tweaking the shapes and tried making a small barbute:



























The grill on this one was made by Eugene Gladkoff, the captain of BotN Russia 1 team. The helmet scull by yours truly:

Mr. Gladkoff sure used some beefy stock for that grill!

I guess you can't skimp on these HMB helms.
Better safe than sorry.

Yep, better safe than sorry )

Barbanegra,

You did an excellent job

Thanks a lot!

Clean work!

Thanks!

currently working on a sallet. pics later.

Nice, they finally let you do something other than bascinet.

Yes) A change of pace does feel good)))

I need some place to gather my thoughts, and why not here, so please bear with me...

Yesterday I got into a discussion with Konstantin the Red here viewtopic.php?f=1&t=179024 and that, after the initial wave of denial, got me thinking hard.

First` I`ve been thinking that I`d like some new stakes, but I was not shure what shapes I`d need... So I remembered a guy on facebook, Travis Lee Conn, telling me about this Brian Clarke guy, an Irish Silversmith who devised his own method of raising. Well, to be more presice, he apparently came up with what he now calls "speed raising". It involves crimp raising over a special stake, then using, to quote, "huge plastic mallets" (this guy works in silver and copper, cold, so I think that with my 1.5 kg and 2 kg raising sledges I`ve got that part covered ) and a raising stake that looks like half of a rugby ball or a melon.

Konstantin pointed out to me the existence of weldable pipe caps. I`ve done a searcharound and it turns out that one could buy those in Moscow, Russia, in various sizes, thicknesses, two different shapes:
either this one



or this one



and, most importantly, various steels: mild, stainless and heat treatable low alloy steel alloyed with molybdenium which responds to heat treatment. Sweet!

Also, prices are quite reasonable.

So the idea is to take an elliptical cap, 10-12 mm thick, and 219 mm wide, in quality steel, cut a piece out of the middle, like this:



and weld back together and onto a suitable t-stake.

Then, there`s this thought.

Those caps, if made out of quality steel, seem like a very decent starter for a squished one-piece helmet scull.
So my question to those with the experience with this - which shape cap would produce, with minimum( for a given value of minimum) fuss, a bascinet scull like this

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/294845106830452745/

or this

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/294845106830369569/

Also, for bending the tubes, I think it would`ve been nice if I got to swap my quick and dirty bender for something like that
http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/ge ... #post14664 maybe even powered by an electric motor...

I think that after I`ve played with it for a while, I could write up a bending sequence that would produce a very evenly bent egg-shaped tube every time for every size I might need to make, and also speed the process up by taking the quesswork, eyeballing and tweaking out of it...

So, hivemind, I needs help and critique!

Well, I have a project in the drawer that involve using some stake similar to those pipe caps you found. The idea is to take a metal sheet, bend it in a U shape that match the stake, lock it in place with bolts in the skirt (only the sides, in other words the apexes of the U). Then you heat one side of the sheet and beat the hell out of it until it match the stake, then you turn the stake and to the other side (you are forming only the brow and the back skull of the helm). Once you have a bell shape, you can remove the helm from the stake and continue freehand. But the stake must be made with a cap and a piece of pipe, because obviously, a helm is deeper.
I have some ideas about the angle at which the metal to be worked should be clamped to the stake, but need to make something out of this idea before talking about it.