The Armour Archive

I am looking for pictures on how to make a nice chin strap. Can anyone help me. Also my Barbute helm has a hole on top, what is it for ? If it is for a decoration , how do I make a nice brass pattern for it. Any suggestion? Thank you

The hole on the top is for a pomme type plume holder, a sort of finial. I am unaware of any patterns for this.

Deluxe chinstraps for barbutes... hmm. Well, everyone likes chin cups and many like a four-point system for anchoring straps, combined with a chin cup which this method naturally does. The strap arrangement anchors two high points at the height of and ahead of the tops of the ears and two low anchor points ahead of and just below the earlobes. A band goes horizontally from one earlobe to the other, passing between the point of the chin and the lower lip, and another band passes from one ear-top to the other, passing just under the chin. The two bands define a chin cup which may be filled in in any fashion you see fit, such as with a vertical strap joining the two bands, which bands also cross at either side of the chin. Buckled closures near the chin cup allow you to undo the chinstrap.

It's handy to have the straps' ends anchor to D-rings fitted at the anchor points, for ease of repairs or replacement of broken straps, which can eventually happen. D-rings, being steel and not leather, may best be affixed to your barbute with steel rivets, which will match your barbute better than copper rivets ever can. Make the strap ends so you can loop a narrowly pointed end around, push it through a hole in the strap, and knot it on the other side, and you don't have to sew or rivet the strap around the D-ring. You need brass or copper rivets for riveting leather, as steel will turn the leather black and hasten rot. Nonferrous rivets are kinder to leather by quite a bit.

Everything else is pretty much optional decoration and elaboration, if you really want to take it that far. It's worth the bother, as a helmet with every detail as nice as you can manage is good for your morale. A medieval Japanese commander once remarked that a good-looking helmet is a good idea: it won't necessarily make you a better fighter, he said, but it is the setting in which your severed head would be displayed to a victorious enemy general! [exclamation point mine]

So, the chin cup, if comprehensive enough, and it could be an entirely separate component, buckling to Y-shaped straps going to the four anchor points I described, is a venue for decorative techniques like using stamping tools and such. It would probably be too small for a good job of carving your badge or device into with a swivel knife, so if you're going to try carved details along your straps and cup, try something like medieval foliates of 15th-century date or a little later.

It would be unusual to go to this level of detail, but if you have ornate tastes in armor (Continental European persona? They had gaudier tastes than the English, by all accounts.) this should surely satisfy them.

I like Rods chinstraps he sells on the mandrake site:

www.mandrakearmory.com

Dig around the armour section and you will find it. Like all of $16 and it comes preassembled with everything you need to install it.

I have a variation that Jeff Hedgecock designed in the late 80's thats quite close to what Rod sells and I have never had a chinstrap that worked as well. In fact I have the origional chinstrap from my first helm in my gear box as a backup =)

Rod's chin cup may be a bit beefier than I prefer, but its a system I trust based on the same principles.

I use the one from Mandrake Armory as well... aside form makeing your own, for 16 bucks you can't beat it. You only have to drill two holes in you helmet (right at about your ear lobs). This chinstrap holds you face away from you grill or helmet front as well as holding it down on your head.

[img]http://www.mandrakearmory.com/Merchant2/graphics/00000001/chinstrap.jpg[/img]