I am considering building some loaner helms for our barony,...what, my learned fellows, would you consider to be the, dare I say?...easiest, (read amatuer friendliest) helm to attempt to construct.
I have hammers, a jig-saw, a VERY small anvil (11 lbs), powerdrill, a compressor, AND A WILL OF IRON!!!!...ROARRR!!!...cough, sputter, still getting over the flue!
I think the answer to your question will be a resounding "it depends."
Variables include:
What you are willing to buy - building some simple helmets/helms from pre-welded tops from RFTH would be very easy, but you would have to be willing to buy those.
What techniques feel "easy" to you? Curling metal for a barrel helm isn't hard. But dishing the plates for a spangen-type thing isn't either if you happen to have a dish and appropriate hammer.
Given all of that -
Simple barrel type helm with tabbed top is pretty basic and the result is pretty much a real helm that looks medieval and works for the SCA without significant funny stuff.
Simple "Sugar loaf" type thing if you start from a RFTH top can be very easy. Easier than a barrel because you already have the top.
Probably less simple is a c. 1980 spangen type thing, but it still isn't all that hard. Much less authentic by the time you are done. But that may not matter.
Bei-Dargen-pattern.jpg (97.36 KiB) Viewed 6960 times
If you can peen rivets or clench nails, curl plate and raise the top edge, you can do it. Lot's of people cheat by tabbing the top internally or externally to the crown plates.
ferrum ferro acuitur et homo exacuit faciem amici sui
Or they weld a riveting flange around a sufficiently heavy top cap -- interior- or exterior-fit.
Easiest loaner hat? Barrel helm, hands down. Very faint dishing of the brow and occiput plates, the "crown" plates. The workmanship on a lot of them -- not all -- was pretty home-madey anyway.
An eleven pound anvil you can set rivets with. Won't do for the larger force and bigger hammers of bending the metal with. You may wish to organize a heavy T stake somehow. A welder can make you up one once you show him a plan and some specs. Doesn't even need to be any special steel, mild is fine.
I'd avoid the tab-top method if at all possible and try somehow for a solid or mostly solid riveting flange. Even if I had to work it hot. There is opportunity to fudge with interior-fitted top caps, though -- taking a few darts, they're hidden. There are things you can do to help a riveting flange get to the needed angle.
Lightly to moderately dish the top cap, taking care thus of some of the bending needed. You are trying to have the edge of the top cap bent far enough down to lie closely on the upper edges of the crown plates, see below.
Bend in the top edges of the forehead and occiput plates once these are riveted together -- just some. No need to be extreme. Helps to mate the top edge to the flange of the top cap.
With these helps in train, hammer round and round and round the edge of the top cap, very gradually bringing the riveting flange down bit by bit to an angle where it will meet up with the upper two plates. It will probably start to develop ripples as you hammer. Flatten these ripples out again with hammerstrokes that slide sideways in a direction around the circumference of the top cap, trying to noodge the metal together. Keep at it until it's quite smooth, no ripples or waves. Take care of ripples the very next lap around the edge after you see them begin to form.
And snipping a dart or two -- particularly with the interior-fit caps.
A riveting flange can get hammer-bent over the point of an anvil horn, but yours is too small and light. The abovementioned heavy T stake might do better, bending the flange over the corner of the square-cut end intended for this purpose. A flange about 5/8" across should do for about any helm and allow for somewhat offcenter or wandering rivet holes. If a little of that happens, it just looks like medieval workmanship and not modern-day precision. Easy to have happen using a hand drill...
In all the assembly, you can pre-drill those edges of plates that lie over other plates, either before bending or after, but before drilling the rivet holes through the plate edges that lie beneath. The holes in the overlapping edge handily locate the holes through the underlying one. So the order of hole-drilling for an interior-topcap helm would look something like this:
Holes in left and right edges of the forehead plate.
Holes, ditto, of the occiput plate, proceed to rivet together
Holes all round the top edges of these two plates.
Fitting the top cap inside there, and having tweaked it until it fits smoothly all around, clamp it in place with the long-reach pinchy Vise-Grips so you can drill holes in the top cap, starting with just two or three and temporarily bolt the top cap in place with machine screws and nuts. Wing nuts are very good.
Drill the rest of the holes into the top cap, through the holes in the crown-pieces' top edge, all around it. More bolts put in as you go will help a lot so holes don't drift sideways or anything.
Holes in sides and upper edge of the ventail, or face, plate, after, or at the same time, it is bent and all the ventilation holes have been cut. That's right, the overlapping edge is upwards, just like around the top cap -- this is to prevent lances, which come in from slightly low, catching anywhere on the helm. If ventail has a nasal bar to rivet to the forehead plate, drill these holes too.
Fit the plate and drill holes in the edges of the nape plate.
Holes for anchoring the chinstrap, using hand drill.
Exterior fitted top caps are no harder to fit than interior, but are an earlier feature. In this case the rivet holes get drilled through the top cap's edge first, locating the holes thus in the top edges of the two crown plates under it. With either kind, assemble the entire top half of the helm before putting the lower half on so you have room to work.
Last edited by Konstantin the Red on Wed Feb 19, 2014 9:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Well, by the strict definition of the word, I am an amateur, and so are most of us, including Wade. Though I take it you don't mean "a person who practices a field of study non-professionally" and instead mean "a person unskilled in or having only a superficial knowledge of a subject or activity".
So the question is not "what is easiest for the amateur". The questions are:
1) How much knowledge do you have, and
2) How much knowledge are you willing to gain.
I've made one great helm. I did it primarily because my nephew needed something for a school project and I had never done one, and I was way past the point where I should have done it already.
I didn't really like it.
What I discovered is that I, personally, find making spangens a lot less of a pain. The bigger a piece of steel, the more I have to fidget with it to make it the shape I want, until I break down and start raising, and if I'm raising something it sure isn't going to be a great helm.
I find it a lot easier to take smaller pieces of steel and fit them together neatly.
Or more enjoyable, or I like the end product better, or whatever. I prefer doing spangens.
But I wouldn't know this if I hadn't done both. And that knowledge would factor heavily into what I would choose if I meant to do a bunch at once.
Stuff I will trade for: PWM controllers, steel sheet/rod/bar (4130/410/1050/toolsteel), ITC, casting supplies, wood tools, silver, oxpho blue, gun stuff (9luger/357mag/12g/7.62x54R/22LR), hammers, stakes, or pitch me!
Maciejowski barrelhelms (c. 1230-1255 AD) are an example of exterior-fit top caps. They are also quite large top caps, and some do not like them because they are so easy to hit tellingly from above in the SCA game -- from the side, too, with those corners. They call them "Mace Landing Pads," with justice. The things played better against sharps -- spaced armor effect -- than against sticks! They may have directly evolved from the angular saltshakers.
As barrelhelms advanced with the decades they steadily evolved smaller and smaller top caps. By the era of the true, mid-1300s great-helm, the top cap was shaped in plan like an almond, pointed part forward -- and that point in an almond shaped top cap is a good place to snip a dart out of the rivet flange, for ease in bending it down -- fitting into a frontal crease to the helm, and fairly deeply dished, pulling the upper storey of the helm in closer to the wearer's skull and cerveillière. And it was fitted inside, so a lance could not catch on that seam. Bet that saved a lot of necks, literally.
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If you want to muster a team of new-fighter-need-um-helm shop monkeys to pound out half a dozen barrel- or great-helms in jig time and most of them are newb-oids, you and any experienced guys concentrate on assembling the top halves of the things, and start the inexperienced ones in attaching the lower halves onto the upper halves. You can quickly subdivide even the upper-half tasks with the new guys too: there's no trick at all to riveting forehead plate to occiput plate, nor to the very slight dishing of these two to medievalize them. The technically toughest part is that top cap and its flange, and this doesn't get traced or cut out until the forehead-occiput assembly is together anyway. Trace around it, then trace around concentrically to it one more time, but 5/8" out from the first trace-around.
There's a lot even a new guy can do on a drill press to expedite this. He can drill a mega bunch of holes while the metal's still flat: rivet holes on all the overlapping-edges of the several parts, drill the ventail breaths, maybe one of the holes for where four plates meet the way Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico do. That one usually means you need an extra long rivet there to get through all four layers of metal. And there's a trick you can use so there's not four layers of metal there! -- you stagger the vertical seam, which makes it so there are only three layers anywhere and you can use shorter rivets in these corners.
(Meanwhile, you experienced guys are spending your time getting the top caps cut out, slightly dished (the extra step is worth it; makes the flange easier), and their riveting flanges bent and fitted so they lie well inside the tops of the Foreheads-Occiputs. Proceed to hand-drill and rivet, working crisscrossing the breadth of the cap like you're tightening wheel lugs after changing a tire, so nothing drifts out of shape. Drill, put bolt in, work all round until you're ready to rivet three or four holes in, then fill in making the other rivet holes and hammering rivets in.)
So what's Nicky New Guy on the drill-press doing? On an interior-fit top cap helm plan, he can pre-drill three holes down the Forehead plate's right and left edges, and holes in its top edge, spaced 1 3/4"-2" apart. Zip zip zip, done. Hand it off to the guy who is putting the conical bend into the forehead plate. He has the occiputal plates to conical-bend also.
The Ventail plate, that'll keep New Guy busy on the drill press -- many holes. Assume it has a nasal bar: this gets at least one or two rivet holes in it, depending on how wide or how tall -- how much scope there is right there. Zip, zip. Now there're the upper edges coming out on either side of the sights, the ocularia, the eyeslits: these usually are tabs rising up a little, overlapping the corresponding bits of the Forehead plate: couple holes in each of these, couple more zip, zips each side. Then more holes, also legally spaced per the Armour Standards, down the right and left edges, starting with the top corner there where the tab bits meet the left and right edges, where there is probably a hole anyway from the prev step. Takes a little longer than zip zip. Now you've got the breaths to cut, and that takes a lot more. Small drill holes are quite all right for period. Large perfectly circular drill holes are a good bit too modern, and a giveaway, no matter what you do. You want bigger breaths, make them cut: rectangular, T-shaped like the Bozen/Balzano helm, rectangular with a diamond shaped wide spot in the middle, vertical slots. Anything but great big round; the medievals didn't have twist drills anything like what we use, and half inch holes in metal didn't happen the way we put them in. Three 1/4" holes, practically touching, in a row, OOO, then file away the remaining metal between them with a round file (good job for a newb shop monkey) and there's your slot-breath once you've squared the corners up. Voilà, instant Medieval. Hand this piece off to Bender Bending Rodriguez to get it bent. He'll bend the Nape plate too.
Our indefatigable drill jockey ain't done: he can pre-drill the bottom edge of the Occiputal plate too. Or not. Could go the other way. Which would mean pre-drilling the top edge of the Nape plate before maybe doing a little hammer bending to get it lying on the Occiputal, which comes down in a bit of a slant usually. (It doesn't absolutely have to, and the Occiputal and Nape can be combined into one single straight-up half cylinder. Saves some working effort, makes a somewhat clunkier, slightly weightier helm. Worth making one that way just to learn it, so, recommended -- makes a four-plate helm. (There's a three-plate scheme too, but that one's easiest to do fast using a Beverly. You cut slits in the frontal plates that reach from the edges to the sights. Not even darts; you make the metal overlap to rivet it together there between sight and side. Kirby used to make super basic buckethats that way -- straight in back and the frontal plate bent at the nasal-bar, the slits left and right thus closed, then riveted shut, the top cap fabricated up with a welded flange. The things were tanks, as he used very heavy mild for the top-caps. But kind of ugly. Bribe him enough and he'll still make you one even now.)
{Added later} Thinking on it some more this morning, hmm -- pre-drilled holes in the exterior top cap may impose weak spots all round the flange that make it hard to bend without instantly crumpling and rippling right when you don't want it to. Might be better doing the bend-down first, then taking it to the drill press and drilling the holes from the inside, once the flange is fully formed and all its metal evenly stressed and worked over. Mark/scribe the line of the rivets, centerpunch for the holes on the line, pilot-hole, full-size hole.
The habit is to use 3/16" dia rivets, steel or brass, usually steel for its strength. It is okay to use 1/8" rivets if you use twice as many per foot of seam, and spaced closer together; what you want is enough cross-section of rivet metal holding the plates together. Flatheaded tinners' rivets are the easiest to work with. Back these up with something good and solid inside the helm (that T stake again), and put them through the holes with the flat heads to the inside, peining the rivet on the outside where you can easily swing a hammer.
The low skill, easy-eyeball curler of metal for the bends in helm plates would be any of the variations on the Poor Man's Sliproller, which has been mentioned around here before.
It's three lengths of black plumbing pipe, each about 2 feet maximum. Two are fixed down, adjustable from parallel to each other about two or three inches apart, to splayed at an acute angle, for making conical bends with. This is optional.
For these two pipes, thick wood, oak or pine, may be substituted. They wear, though. They muffle the pounding a bit.
The third piece of pipe you hold in your hand. The metal is placed on the first two, and then with the pipe you're holding, you club the metal right between the two pipes underneath it to make it bend. Adjusting the pipes underneath to diverge at a shallow angle will give a conical bending effect as you pound away. If necessary, have the more open end placed away from you as you do the clubbing.
The tool has a tendency to produce a faceted bend of a series of curved places alternated with flat ones, so bend gently just a little bit at each pass and repeat your passes back and forth until you have arrived at your desired curvature. Space the bend-zones very close together. If a light dish is then called for, break out the heavy, rounded-face dishing hammer and have at it.
Faceted bends tend to be the greatest nuisance with the Ventail plate: the metal tends to bend along the dotted line made by the breaths if you're not careful -- it's the weakest place with the least metal in it, and would yield first. Faceting can also be reduced by using a larger-diameter steel pipe than the black fire-sprinkler piping I've been talking about so far.
For some people this is enough of a bother that they bend the ventail plate first and cut the breaths after. It can still be done with a drill press; you'd just like to work mostly from the inside of the plate, or come up with a good holding jig, like a big hunk of wood shaped like a half cylinder to clap the sheet metal plate onto. Then mark, centerpunch, oil and drill.
I've talked a lot about a drill press. It's great for drilling fast and straight and with great control. But having one is by no means absolutely necessary to make a bunch of barrel helms quickly. (Not like the way you'd need power and a roof to work under.) If there's no drill press, several friends who have power drills of their own can still do a lot in but a few hours' working if somebody provides a power strip or a power pigtail. Lots of outlets. Inexpensive.
So, James, got anybody in your Barony who is tool-handy and ready? Odds are they can't all be ten-thumbed hippie computer jockeys.
Last edited by Konstantin the Red on Tue Feb 25, 2014 9:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
boris_ wrote:How hard would a kettle-helm with bar-grill be for a first helm?
I wouldn't, not for a first. Pretty much like a spangen, yes. But with one very definite difference: the brim.
Most people have a good bit of trouble learning to make a clean flange on "soupcan" elbows.
Putting a flange all the way around a helm to attach the brim is an order of magnitude more hammering than an elbow or knee.
It's also a much bigger job than putting a proper flange on a great helm top.
That said, I'll repeat my earlier sentiment.... I do also enjoy making kettles more than greathelms, but again, it's because I've done both.
I do think everyone should make kettles, though. They're way, way, way underrepresented in the SCA, for one of the most common period hats. Plus the brim is really nice in the summer.
Stuff I will trade for: PWM controllers, steel sheet/rod/bar (4130/410/1050/toolsteel), ITC, casting supplies, wood tools, silver, oxpho blue, gun stuff (9luger/357mag/12g/7.62x54R/22LR), hammers, stakes, or pitch me!
wcallen wrote:. . . building some simple helmets/helms from pre-welded tops from RFTH would be very easy, but you would have to be willing to buy those.
<geschnippt>
Simple "Sugar loaf" type thing if you start from a RFTH top can be very easy. Easier than a barrel because you already have the top.
Second that notion. Getting pre-made helmet tops lays out a little cash -- not much -- and opens up curved-top helms and helmets by coping with the technically most difficult part of the forming, leaving the simpler bottom half to you. Drill its edge for rivets and you're off to the Eric.
They amount to a very good skill and confidence builder. Some of our correspondents write in, fearful of trusting their one and only brain to something their hands built. This fear is not greatly justified -- it is what the Armour Standards and the Knight's Marshals are for: the one sets the necessary structure standards and the latter vet your work.
Even a too-thin helm is not a waste if it is allocated to Youth Boffer use only. Building a first helm from thick enough metal (14 or 12 gauge) while you're learning is really no harder than making it up out of the thin stuff (16-18ga).
Thank you Hugo of Wiesenfeuer, it is rare that I get feed back on my projects.
A few specialized tools, hammers and the correct pattern one can create something of usefulness.
I picked up a pair of bascinet helm halve tops from Master Luwellyn (I believe they are RFTH dished halves). I plan to have them welded and then use Halberds slat back style for the rear of the helm and then rig up grill for the face.
Now....here comes the BOOM!!...the helm tops I picked up have an outer circumference of about 28 inches. Which makes for a really big helm. My question is; could I cut down the dished helm halves to make it a smaller helm?
Well, such can readily accommodate somebody who takes a size 7 5/8 hat. Indeed, more. We have met some correspondents who have bewailed the unavailability of helms they can get their heads into and still have list-legal padding inside.
On a more typical 7 1/4 adult head, like 23" around I think (okay, that's 7 3/8), the bare, scraping list legal minimum would be a 26" circumference. 28" around doesn't look all that extreme, considered like that. It amounts to considerably less than an inch additional diameter over a twenty-sixer. {ETA: so maybe you'd like to use halves that make a 27" circ once it comes to that}
I'd proceed without trimming anything off. In a slatback you can always pull the slats to slant in a bit in the back and some in the sides if you want to reduce volume and bulk and give it a graceful, artistic line, and then curl 'em back out some at the bottom to finish it off. In a first helm, it doesn't hurt to have an extra inch of circumference.
Last edited by Konstantin the Red on Sun Feb 23, 2014 10:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Part of the vexation in the stick game is how well temple-snaps land, owing to those nice big corners out there. Tends to impair the fighter's confidence if his shieldwork has not yet been trained superlatively. Skippy helmets are better that way, and one reason for the popularity of the grilled basc even among the veriest newbies.
Looking up hat sizes, a twenty-eighter skull will list-legal handle a head up to a 7 7/8, which measures 24 5/8" around. That's a lot of cranium, and it would leave but a bit over the half-inch legal minimum.
Last edited by Konstantin the Red on Sun Feb 23, 2014 10:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Ok, lots of people have taken a run at this question but I'm gonna throw in my two cents. Easiest / quickest helm to build, I gotta go with ol carlo's tear drop helms. Easiest helm to make that you might actually want to fight in, greathelm or barrel helm. Spangens are easy to construct but usually (I know, not always but usually) get a bargrill and bargrills usually (again, I know, not always but usually) require welding. I know a few people (otto for one) who make bargrills without welding but I don't think I would call it easy. So flat topped greathelm or barrel helm. No welding, really no dishing, doesn't HAVE to have creasing. In its simplest form it requires only cutting, bending, and riveting. Best of luck, let us know how it goes.
So far, Jamesedgarson's first two efforts are going to be SCAdian, the kind of method first perfected in the Boba Fetts and spuntops, applied to helm-halves pre-welded for him as he is attending to their style. Apparently with grills, so he's doing close to though not absolutely, scratchbuilt.
Scratch built from the flat metal, like you said, like I outlined how to slam on it and end up with half a dozen.
Non-welded bargrills by home-making, worked up from bar stock and round -- well, they are rather crufty, and weldwork at where the bars join with the center stringer would be sturdier in the long run, really. Smoother contour too, as with welding you can simply lay the roundstock bars into cut notches along the outside of the center stringer, fill with weld, and file or grind smooth. Sawn out -- that takes lengthy effort.
Not carlos, Carlo. Trueheart (or Truehearth was never really clear on that) armory. Hmm, lemme see if I can find a link.
Yep, link to the helm in question http://www.truehearth.com/trdrp.jpg
Not sure how active ol Carlo is these days, I understand his grown up job has been limiting his time in the shop. But anyway, back when I was first getting started so gave me the pattern for his "teardrop" helm. Its basically a rectangle of steel with a couple notches cut into it (that become the eyeslot) a straight strip to go up the front to hold the ends togeather, and a teardrop shaped cap that gets folded down and riveted, or can be done like a daisy topped greathelm, with tabs.
I see. A four-plate edition -- ventail and forehead being bridged by another piece of steel -- of a 3-plate, in which the frontal plateage bends at the nasal-oid, but is still one piece of metal that just gets really narrow in that spot. In a 3-plate, front, back, and top make up the entire bucket.
I'd wondered where the teardrop bit was on the helm, too. Speaking for myself, overall I like it -- good structure. I'd fiddle with the details, though. I'd seek a more medieval style layout of the breaths, and more of them, on one side anyway. Probably in patterns, or resorting to rectangular cut breaths. I like a helm ventail to stand well forward of the lower face; there's all that much more room to put breaths in, plus rather more under-chin airway too. And I try and stay quite the hell away from tab-tops* because I know garage armourers can manage a solid flange even by amateurish pounding as long as they know it'll take a number of laps round, and how to eliminate the bottlecap wave. All they need under it is sufficient stake (creasing or tee) or a handy anvil of 70# or more. And there's always hotworking the cap flange, which calls for the commitment of buying a propane/air burner, its tank, some firebrick and a fireproof spot to do hotwork in -- like a cement/gravel driveway or carport. Or some very bare dry earth. And that stake or anvil again. But either way, floor your heating-spot with firebrick for one facet of your three-corner reflector of torch heat.
*The decorative treatments of tab tops excepted, such as the full-on dagged daisy you mention in passing, or the engrailed, cusped line that's also been used and shown onsite -- puts the rivets in each pointed cusp, and the engrailing pulls the flange back to a minimum of about half the depth of the cusps. This sort of thing says the craftsman knows what he's doing, and isn't forced into a cruder, weaker solution to just get that darn cap on.
By "anvil," I also mean the end of a scrap of RR track. Any great lump of steel with a crisp edge for creasing.
Well, I use a centerhinge bascinet myself and am not making any hats for new fighters. And I can pattern such a bucket-hat just by looking at the picture anyway. Kind of you to offer.
Upon my quest to make my first helm, I began to pound in our backyard,...and a voice said "Get thee to the basement" and so I moved to the basement of our townhouse...."Get thee to the garage!" sayth she-who-must-be-obeyed....so I moved to the garage and began anew.....and again the mighty voice from above sayth.."get thee to the shop or get thee to the curb!"...this confused me...mostly because I don't have a SHOP!...sooooooo....had to build a shop...but BEFORE I could build the shop...I had to have the supplies to build the shop....and the caveat from the voice on high was "thy must not put-eth any more drachma on the credit-card-eth!"...so, what to do?...AH!!!...but I am a resourceful furry critter and so, as I passed by an industrial shop near work that was unloading the mother-of-all shipping crates I asked if I could have it...and so, as I then posted on my facebook page began the SCORE-OF-THE-CENTRY!!!...managed to salvage 17 4x8 sheets of plywood,75 1x8x8 boards, and 28 4x4x8 posts...WICKED-COOL!!...but then a smaller voice said "Daddy, you have lots of wood now, can you build me a castle?"...sigh...if you believe you can say no to a five year old princess who asks you to build her a castle in the backyard than you are a better man than I.
So....long way round, I'm nearly done my princess's castle and when that finishes...and I build my shop...THEN I get to pound some metal again...should be done by,..oh...the fall.
Last edited by jamesedgarson on Thu May 15, 2014 1:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
jamesedgarson wrote:but then a smaller voice said "Daddy, you have lots of wood now, can you build me a castle?"...sigh...if you believe you can say no to a five year old princess who asks you to build her a castle in the backyard than you are a better man than I.
Anyone who can say no to that request is NOT a better man than I.
jamesedgarson wrote:I have hammers, a jig-saw, a VERY small anvil (11 lbs), powerdrill, a compressor, AND A WILL OF IRON!!!!...ROARRR!!!...cough, sputter, still getting over the flue!
The beginning and the end of this thread make it sound like this particular cow has pretty well jumped over the moon, or at least the rooftree!
And you been whackin' stuff with a hammer for a while building the castle, which is all to the good. (Does Princess have fun storming it when she's feeling rowdy?) Getting up a shop-roof (at least) will get you about where you and She Who Better Be Listened To want you to be. I guess she doesn't want to listen to you planishing. Gotta admit jigsawing helm-gauge metal is noisy. So containing that racket is a must.
And you may not have to do the noisy stuff at home you know... Baronies often enough have other garage armourers besides oneself! Cantons, being smaller, worsen the odds alas. But is there anyone in Caldrithig Canton...?
The very efficient, swift at moving 16ga, soft-hammer-hard-anvil "hammering on air" quasi-raising is not very noisy. A muffled twack twack twack sound. You'd like a Garland Mfg Split Head Rawhide Hammer for this job -- heavy-hitting, doesn't mar the metal, fairly expensive but worth the money for speed and the labor it saves planishing, for it produces smoothly curved metal. If you railroad-stake your tiny anvil to a very heavy stump to put some mass under its ass, the tiny anvil's face may serve, both for this kind of sheet metal pushing and using the horn to back rivets up as you pein. But it needs some serious weight added in -- it's about a seventh the weight of my farriers' anvil.
The tools you listed in your OP are enough to get you going on amateur helms. The compressor, if it's big enough in the tank opens up air-tools. Compressed air is a popular motive force for power planishers, which are much more a production type tool than a "few helmets for the Shire loaner closet" guy, but air tools can be full of teh clever. They're rather good at keeping things cool while you work on them, for one thing. That's different from what usually happens as you do stuff to steel.
When you were making all that noise that She objected to, what were you bending with a hammer? Some 2D bends you can make in air, using a vise on one side and a couple Vise-Grips on the other, hauling the durn thing into shape by leverage. You will want a vise anyway. Usually people get mechanics' vises for this kind of work. The dedicated pounders seek out a blacksmiths' leg-vise, designed to be hit with big hammers. (A bench vise isn't, and you can mess it up good beating on it.)
Minimizing the banging by not using a steel hammer very much helps too -- wooden versions of the poor man's sliproller, which you've got the wood to make, and (preferably hardwood) "sheet metal slappers," which are very good for gentle curvatures even if you have to build them special yourself to give them enough weight to bend 14 gauge instead of 20. I'd make a wood-and-metal sandwich for the weight if just making it very deep out of 2x8 plank weren't enough. Slappers have leather working faces so they hit fairly quiet. There's a lot like this you can do.
Last edited by Konstantin the Red on Mon Jan 18, 2021 11:35 am, edited 1 time in total.
Well, i'm getting there...the castle is done!...shed in the morrow, so perhaps by mid-july I might actually get to start hammering steel!!!!...which would be awesome seeing as I hope to fight in Combat of the Thirty at Pennsic and as of this post...I don't have a appropriate helm
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That's a heck of a castle for your young princess! I like and respect your priorities.
Ive got the same question as the OP with a few differences. I can weld very well and have all necessary equipment for welding, I lack faith in my shaping abilities. What would be a good first helm for me?
Again, a barrel, just like it says up-thread. And note also the helm skull halves mentioned.
What is it about your forming that disturbs you with the lack of faith? Basic dishing is pretty much entirely a matter of your tools: a heavy hammer and a dished hollow in a stump.
