The Armour Archive

I'm thinking on going to a 12-13c. persona and I'm wondering about the pros and cons of fighting in a great helm.

I've heard that you lose alot of vision due to a 1 inch slot being about an inch from your face as well as breathing in a lot of your own hot air.

With the exception of the vision, wearing a full face motorcycle helmet in rush hour traffic with the visor down, would seem to be similar to a great helm

Yes, I understand YMMV...

Don

You're not as physicaly active intrafic, so the hot breath doesn't seem as bad.

also the breath you exhale has nearly as much oxygen as it did when you inhaled it, so it's just the heat and PERCEPTION of not getting enough oxygen that you need to deal with.

The vision thing is a disadvantage but one you can learn to deal with. (Duke Reinmar has won 3 crown tourneys here with a closed visored helmet.)

And getting rid of the bargrill is PRICELESS.

I fight in a flat top great helm...Have no problem seeing..Course, probable not as good as a helm with bars...But..Well enough..The air issue is more in your head than anything...As Aaron said the air is hotter...But it was a mental exercise when I first wore it to breath...When I get a slight break I make myself take deep breaths...Have had no problem with it since..

Hold something 1 inch from your mouth and breathe, that way you see how it is. As long as you dont stuff the part in front of your face with tons of blue foam, breathing wont be a problem..

The eye slot on my helm is 3/4 inch. As long as its fitted close to the eyes, the visibility is fine. Medievil warriors wouldn't have bet their lives and or family fortunes on helms you couldn't see out of.

I have been wearing a great helm recently I made for my 1330 Scot knight harness. So far I cannot think it’s an issue. I may drill more little holes into it as I did only a few rows of 3/16 holes and I think a few 1/8s might add a bit more lower vision and ventilation. For me vision is not bad at all, just like all my visored helmets really.

Good luck. I wear mine around the house to get used to it.... mostly the weight but walking talking etc with it on.

RPM

That photo ROCKS! Nice rig!

Here is the advice I got when I wore a great helm.

1. Bow before fighting your opponent, and wiggle your head a little.
2. While out of range, lean slightly forward so they can see the top of the great helm.
3. Now that they can’t resist aiming for the top of your helm, block their shot now that you’ve directed them where to aim, and then kill them.
4. Others also told me to have a circular motif on the helm, effectively a target on top and that would drive your average SCA heavy fighter batty…like waving a red cape in front of a bull.

-Aaron

Fighting in any closed helm is about conditioning. I fought against Aaron fairly heavily for quite a while and we both have closed visors (mine has less then a 1/4" eye slot because that's a more authentic size then 7/8"). The breating wasn't an issue DURING the fight but it was so nice to pop the visor at the end.

What I find isn't that I have trouble breathing (never eat onions or garlic before fighting in a closed helm) but that I had trouble COOLING from breathing. In a heavy and enclosed suit or heavy gambeson under maile you are actually cooling your core temperature a lot by breathing. It's like a dog cooling by panting. It's not like sweating means s**t when the sweat either can't evaporate under the plate or evaporates so far from the body it has no cooling effect.

There are a lot of small advantages to bar-grills but they don't look nearly as cool as most closed helms do. What's more important to you? winning 3% more often or looking damn cool while you do it?

Sean

P.S. when you get into the Pas type combats and Cot30 stuff a thrust to a bar-grill is instant death while a thrust to a closed helm is either reduced or invulnerable depending on weapons. It's a nice advantage to have.

Hi Sean,

I actually have never felt I was "gasping for air" in my armet. But I actually like having my face covered and feel MORE comfortable in MOPP gear or a Level A suit than I do without it.

And the stainless steel has a VERY high SPF and lets me keep the sunscreen to a minimum. Oddly enough my NOSE got sunburned at Pennsic. And with a 1/8th inch slot for a viewing in the visor, I was wondering what was going on. Then I noticed that the sun (above me) would come in at an angle and burn my nose, nothing else.

I've got a tube of zinc oxide now in my armour buckets.

As far as cooling, as soon as Andre's mail gussets come in, I'll be sewing up a new arming coat that will be "cut full of holes" and with the mail in the armpits to offer a radiator effect for evaprative cooling.

With respect,

-Aaron

Aaron wrote:Hi Sean,

I actually have never felt I was "gasping for air" in my armet.

You're obviously more in shape. I was gasping for air after suiting up and talking to the audience.

But I actually like having my face covered and feel MORE comfortable in MOPP gear or a Level A suit than I do without it.
-Aaron

Which applies to you and what 10, 12 other people on the plannet?

You can also add a slew of breath holes, makes breathing a breeze AND you can see out of them as well.

If your sights are close to your eyes, your vision can be surprisingly good. But if you intend to fight in athletic specs, this close-in option is not available to you. You'd want to slope your forehead plate at a rather shallower angle to give enough room. The other important feature of your sights is that they be long enough side to side, giving good peripheral vision, as in the pic above.

A ventail (face plate you breathe through) plate set somewhat farther ahead of your face than the minimum necessary to get your head in the hat breathes better, from a combination of having more surface area to put breaths into and having bigger uptake from below the helm's front edge. An extra half inch to an inch of forward placement can mean a lot.

So if you can swing the opposing parameters of sights close, ventail farther, and integrate them into the design, you're doing well. Prototyping in tagboard will settle a lot of your how-tos, as well as giving you a good idea of how much piercing you'd want in your ventail.

The other thing for making your helm look High Middle Ages instead of Late Industrial is to have at least your larger breaths not be of circular shape: slots, squares, crosses like the pic above, stubby T shapes, etcetera. There are plenty of examples of something like the (14th-c.) Pembridge greathelms with many small circular breaths, but half-inch perfect circles with chamfering are a giveaway modern feature even if laid out in a nice pretty rosette with holes tapering down from large to small. In fact an exactly regular layout of breath holes is another very modern feature. The Pembridges' array of breaths have a layout that on examination looks, er, casual. I think they were located on a grid of lines, putting holes where the lines intersected, but these lines were eyeballed, only roughly equally spaced, and drawn on the metal freehand without use of either a rule or a stretched string. Modern guys, used to doing these things exactly, almost always clean the sloppiness up, giving an appearance that while in no way inferior is also not an exact replication of what went before.

I and many others differentiate between 12th-13th-century barrelhelms and their lineal descendants, the 14th-c. greathelms, which are called great because they are rather larger all around. They were intended to be worn over early bascinets, and they had become rather specialized as the helm for wearing during the lance play portion of an engagement, for they were highly protective, rather than the all-the-time use of their earlier counterparts. The Pembridge helms and others of fourteenth-century date are indeed bulkier than the earlier Bozen/Bolzano and other Topfhelms, and the 13th-c. Maciejowskis with their un-Bozen big flat tops the size of a plate.

Fighting in a closed helm does take some getting used to. But getting rid of the bar grills makes it oh so worth it.

Breathing... The air is hot but keeping your breath regular helps.

Sight: Not really as much of an issue as some would think. It does take time getting used to but once you do you are that much better for it.

I still leg Sean while wearing my helm.

I fight in a greathelm and have for 10 years. The big thing I've noticed is that the glancing surfaces are rather lacking when compared to a bascinet. It makes some shots a little easier for you opponents to land.

Jurgen

I fight in a greathelm and have for 10 years. The big thing I've noticed is that the glancing surfaces are rather lacking when compared to a bascinet. It makes some shots a little easier for you opponents to land.

Jurgen

my current rig...

[img]http://home.comcast.net/~longsword/Helms/Tophelm%20Right%201.JPG[/img]

Eye slot is .9375" to prevent any possible failure of inspection...

Breathing has never been a problem and the only time visibility is an issue is when I leg someone and have to close on them... But its not hard knowing what they are going to try to do. I Also plan to add some decorative piercings around the bottom nasal that will also serve as visiblity holes...

I love the crusades and nothing says Mid 13th century crusader like a good ole Pot helm...

That being said my Baron did want me to paint it green and add a bolt to the bottom of each side... I wonder what he meant by that... LOL

That pot helm is all full of awesome, Gideon! I love it!

I fought in a second hand great helm for a short time.

The owner had drilled a line of small holes about 1/8 of an inch below the ocular slot which helped visibility immensely.

Fighting in a closed helm is fine.

IMO breathing is a non-issue so long as you keep remembering to breathe

Vision isn't too bad, you'll have better vision out of a great helm than a later visored bascinet I'd reckon, you probably won't be able to turn your head though, if thats the case, get used to turning your upper body instead (although your opponents shoulders and head are all you really *need* to be able to see).

If I can fight in hounskulls and klappvisors you can fight in a greathelm easy