The Armour Archive

This is the continuation of the Multiple Helmet Tops thread, which includes the conversation about the Devine Dishing Doughnut and the tips & tricks about flaring/contracting to join helmet sections.

I did the layout for the faceplate band yesterday afternoon, and I plan to cut it out today. I'm going to make an attempt to get the eye slit right up at the base of the temple band, but we'll have to see once the measurements show themselves. The top is a bit shorter than I had first planned, and I might need the height in the top of the helm for, well, the top of my head.

I'll be able to see and measure once I get the faceplate band rolled and bring the two pieces together. I plan to stack padding in the dome of the helm to make it wearable, and then measure what I can do with the eye slit height. The flare technique I learned for use on the top might give me some room to improvise.

Question for you: Is there a recommended overlap between helm sections at the joins when riveting?

What is too narrow a margin? I've got 3/16(+)" shank (5mm) rivets.

I use 3/4"
http://home.armourarchive.org/members/h ... lmtext.jpg

Hal

Good, that's right along the lines of what I had been measuring for from the patterns.

Since I got here to New Zealand I've been having to train myself to think Metric. Conversion isn't too hard, but Millimetres aren't instinctive like Inches are.

1 inch = 25 Millimetres and go from there. I've been factoring 20mm.

Dishing is being a bit stubborn in my planning for size from flat steel. What is more the common factor in planning a pattern? If you start with a flat circle and raise it, what does the outside circumference do?

From what I've seen it largely stays the same until you get a deeper dish, and then it shrinks, more rapidly according to how deep the dish is.

How does this relate to the thinning of the plate? You must be able to thin the plate to keep the circumference the same, or decrease the C to keep the thickness in the plate.

Is it all technique, or is there some kind of guideline or formula?

I will leave that question to the more experienced raising guys.

I just leave mine big and trim it to size with my B-2 when done.

Mmmmmm.

ANOTHER TOOL??

Just how exactly do you thing I'm going to hide all these new toys from my wife? She doesn't believe the ones about "I found it." "It was free." "I traded something I already had for it." "They breed, see? The New one looks a little like this one and this one combined."

Help and advice anyone? Who has an excuse that works when used on a wife or significant other to explain away new tools?

"I think he's got it -- I think he's got it -- By George, he's got it!"

Here is the faceplate band plus the bar grill and perforated plate. The bar-grille and perf plate will be welded to the helmet as a single piece. This is to make it Lochac Legal for mixed scenarios, archery in other words. The arrows are wooden shafted, and have a much smaller blunt.

Much more like the real thing, but extra precautions must be taken.

Oooooo, just wait till they see the picture.

I can hear the screaming now....

Hi mate, i know you have had everyone on Lochac list tell you all kinds of thing with your mesh and bargrill but i thought i might add an option for you. What you may like to do in the future is make some little tangs off the side of the bar cage so that you can bold it on the the helmet and therefore make the perf plate removable or make another grill to bolt on for tournmants when you don't want the perf plate. Just something to think about.

That's not an option I had considered.

If you bolt the grille to the helmet, removably bolted, how do you get round the "no significant projections on the inside surface" clause?

I had a feeling that threaded bolts were not sufficient replacements for rivets, what kind of fastening would you use?

We'd be talking something like small carriage bolts, with heads to the inside, shanks probably cut to length and capped with acorn nuts -- though small regular hex nuts may actually be lower profile. They just wouldn't be as round.

And there's countersinking and flathead machine screws. There is a specified maximum intrusion; simply keep intrusion to the barest minimum. Heavy plate or local reinforcement is valuable here. The marshals get much happier at the prospect of a wide, flat intrusion than they would at a narrow, abrupt one.

I've built a helm for mixed-scenario myself back during Atenveldt's rabbit-blunt days -- those arrows do fly better and we lost that when the sword-mafia dukes tried killing combat archery by regulation -- and it is pretty hard to make such a ventail look anything but either ungainly or twentieth-and-later using any kind of perf scheme, commercial or homemade. One fellow remarked of my effort, after trying it on, that the view from inside was downright insectile -- everything seen in a hexagonal array of spots.

I can see how this might be done. You might even get "arty" with it and combine / conceal / disguise the vertical attachment points with a decorative nasal, and put the horizontal points Inside the corners of the bar grille, so the nut profiles would be concealed by the bars of the grille itself.

If you wanted to get really sneaky, you could put a thickness layer of strap steel inside the surface of the helm at the attachment points, and thread the hole you drill through it. Then you could put a dome ground hex bolt through from the outside. The helm itself would be the "nut" and your interior protrusion wouldn't be one at all.

Can I ask why you chose to put an A-historical eye slot on it? Ie, why is it so big. A more historical one would not require a bargrille.


And is your wrap plate all one piece? Instead of a back wrap plate and face plate?

Hmmm what's the minimum slot width for Locac mixed scenario battles? My demo visor for close helm is 3mm to 4mm wide. Visibility sucks but it won't allow even modern hunting arrows in (not that I want to test it). The original pembridge also has narrow eye slots. Why not just make narrower slots and run the breath holes up closer to the eye slots?

BTW now I understand when you said you wanted to make this "Ugly" so people wouldn't steel it but beware, people may choose to reproduce this.

Sean

Sean Powell wrote:BTW now I understand when you said you wanted to make this "Ugly" so people wouldn't steel it but beware, people may choose to reproduce this.

Are you trying to very casualy summon the 'pigs in space' helmet again? I so wish I'd saved a picture of that... someone really needs to make a list legal version of it.

ANYWAY...

Getting artsy with your perf it absolutely possible. When I did this:
[img]http://www.whitebatarmory.com/armor/helmets/sugarloaf/visorless/wmasugar/wmasugar1.jpg[/img]

The customer only wanted perf. I put the cross on basicly for free, as it was the easiest way to keep the perf on the outside of the actual helmet, yet not have the nasty ratty edges that perf tends to have.

mattmaus wrote:

Sean Powell wrote:BTW now I understand when you said you wanted to make this "Ugly" so people wouldn't steel it but beware, people may choose to reproduce this.

Are you trying to very casualy summon the 'pigs in space' helmet again? I so wish I'd saved a picture of that... someone really needs to make a list legal version of it.

OH GOD NO! And if you have pictures please don't share. I REALLY don't need to see one of those list-legal on the battlefield. There wasn't enough eye-bleach for that thing first time around. Crud like that is why the SCA should establish some standard, any standard, above an "attempt" at medieval cothing and garb.

I know we all have different opinions of what is and isn't cool and nice for helms but does ANYONE actually want to wear the pigs-in-space helm?

Sean

I've a touch of sadist in me.... so... yeah... I do kinda want to see a list legal pigs in space.

mattmaus wrote:I've a touch of sadist in me.... so... yeah... I do kinda want to see a list legal pigs in space.

Much like Blankenshield if you say the name 3 times...

PIGS IN SPACE!!!

It just appears!

InsaneIrish wrote:Can I ask why you chose to put an A-historical eye slot on it? Ie, why is it so big. A more historical one would not require a bargrille.
And is your wrap plate all one piece? Instead of a back wrap plate and face plate?

The reason for the bigger eye-slot is that these first helms are going to the newbie-loaner pool, and the more vision the better. I tried to follow the natural sight lines. I'll see how this one fits and wears, and alter the next ones more towards the historical norm if I can manage it.

Yes, the plate is all once piece, welded up the back seam.

Sean Powell wrote:Hmmm what's the minimum slot width for Locac mixed scenario battles? My demo visor for close helm is 3mm to 4mm wide. Visibility sucks but it won't allow even modern hunting arrows in (not that I want to test it). The original pembridge also has narrow eye slots. Why not just make narrower slots and run the breath holes up closer to the eye slots?

BTW now I understand when you said you wanted to make this "Ugly" so people wouldn't steel it but beware, people may choose to reproduce this.

Sean

The mimimum hole is a mixed scanario helm is less than 1/4". Anything larger has to be covered by mesh or perforated plate. Archer in Lochac is a much bigger phenomenon than in the US, and the arrows have wooden shafts. Even a 1" slot would have to be mesh covered, and the mesh has to be on the outside of the helm, so I had to work with the edges of it.

At that point if I wanted to make it a part of the helm, I had to cover the edges somehow, and then at that point, why stick with a narrow opening?

What I'm going to consider with the next helmets is altering my design assumptions. If I can come up with a different theory that fits what I want to achieve, I'll do so. The added conditions is that I've learned an enourmous amout from all of you over the last weeks, which makes my design process easier.

Thanks for that.

mattmaus wrote: Getting artsy with your perf it absolutely possible. When I did this:

The customer only wanted perf. I put the cross on basicly for free, as it was the easiest way to keep the perf on the outside of the actual helmet, yet not have the nasty ratty edges that perf tends to have.

This is nice! Did you have some specs on the largest area of unsupported perforated plate allowable?

You dished the perf a little to get more strength out of it I see. Is the back welded at all?

Did you run the rivets through both the face cross and the perf?

You would three layers of steel at that point round the edges of the ocular. Does the steel of the helm come right up to the edges of the eye-holes?

Oskar der Drachen wrote:This is nice! Did you have some specs on the largest area of unsupported perforated plate allowable?

Not a clue. It's 11g perf and is slightly more stubborn than 14g sheet. I wouldn't be afraid to fight in a helm with nearly the whole visor made out of this particular stuff. Otherwise, it was for a non SCA group. The only requirement I was given was a minimum of 14g on the perf, and not bigger than 1/4" holes.

Oskar der Drachen wrote:You dished the perf a little to get more strength out of it I see. Is the back welded at all?

Did you run the rivets through both the face cross and the perf?

You would three layers of steel at that point round the edges of the ocular. Does the steel of the helm come right up to the edges of the eye-holes?

The eyeslot is basicly as big on the inside as it is on the out. The slot was there when the helm was rough finished. The perf was put on outside of that, and welded up. Some careful grinding to smoth it out, and then put the cross over the top. I think it worked out pretty slick, because the cross sit's tight on the perf on the inside edge, and tight on the helmet on the outside edge. The rivets generaly do not go through the perf, but I think a couple of them caught it.

Well,

We are at the next stage, and it relates to to some previous questions.

I am fitting the top to the faceplate band. Through a combination of shaping and flaring I have fitted all but the front beak of the top.

Here I have a choice, and I am referring to the part outlined in Red.

1st choice is to remove some of the front bottom edge of the slope to fit the last segment. This would have the effect of a more sharply sloping front face. The top sloping back from a point much closer to the top of the eye slit, which we talked about being closer to the original in style. The fit is close though, and I'm nervous about cutting the edge more than I have done.

2nd choice is to contract the front edge of the top back to fit the top edge of the faceplate. This is a safer option, but the style wouldn't be as close. The forehead of the helm face would bulge more.

Any opinions either way?

The final solution was a compromise. It's a good close fit between the pieces. My rivets are not here yet, so on to the eye slit assembly.

Taking all the advice to heart, I've been re-designing my concept.

Instead of the perforated plate I'm looking at heavy gauge steel mesh. Sandwiching it like the above sugarloaf example.

I've also found that fitting allowed me to close the gap between the top and the bottom sections so that the eye-slit is a part of the lower edge of the top section or temple band.

Concept drawing below....

Advice?