The Armour Archive

Bellows visors and the piercings they have.

I've got fair number of pictures, and the piercings of the visors appear to be somewhat random.

There is an eye-slot, and various other rows of piercings along the horizontal lines of the bellows folds.

I'm in a rush at the moment. have to get to work, and will be back with links tomorrow.

The *trend* appears to have the holes in the visors in the upper slope of the horizontal ridges. There are in the "other" lot though and about half of what I have seen show the piercings either in the crease between the ridges, the lower slope, or scattered about in pretty patterns.

What is the best knowledge of the "why" in this. Were any of them for vision, or were they principally for more air?

In the one I am working on, if I place them in the lower slope of the ridge, they line up with my sight lines and I would get better vision down and out (from the ones I can see past my nose and moostache that is).

This is to be a heavy steel combat helm for whatever the fruit-salad of initials is these days.

Ideas? Better knowing than my own?

Here is the Flickr album where the pictures are.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/41945693@ ... 823289071/

The first picture should be the helm without the drape on it, the others are examples I have found. I plan to put four lines of breaths in, and it seems like I will be able to see out of the top three of them. I will be able to see out of them *if* the holes re in the plane of the helm steel that is relatively perpendicular to my sight line. The more perpendicular to that line the better.

Comments?

Obviously, having the breathes on the top helps with resistance to cavalry lances. If you want to see your rein hand, though (or what's in front of your feet, in your case), you put them lower. It would be a good idea to forge your bellows flutes higher; it will improve your optical geometry, so to speak.

James Arlen Gillaspie wrote:Obviously, having the breathes on the top helps with resistance to cavalry lances. If you want to see your rein hand, though (or what's in front of your feet, in your case), you put them lower. It would be a good idea to forge your bellows flutes higher; it will improve your optical geometry, so to speak.

Mmmm, form follows function then.

I would have liked to have the flutes higher, but I was getting stresses in the spring and some beginning cracks. The two that I got I had TIG welded.

I have added three photos showing the fluting depth. The true side view shows only the centre ridge. These also show the TIG welds where I have not cleaned them up yet. The last one is a front to the face picture. The centre line turned out a bit wiggly, but I like the shape a lot.

I still have a lot of work to do to the visor in the form of tweaking the shape for smooth working.

I'll put the makings on now and send another picture of the proposed pattern.

Is this your first try? If so, you're doing pretty well.

This is not all my work, I am working with Paul Bardebes out here in New Zealand, Bell Block residence...

I'm helping, assisting, and learning at a rapid pace. He's a bit broken at this point, so I'll be carrying on with most of the finishing work now.

Look at this bit of video. The human brain will fill in images where the eye can not actually see. The most obvious illustration of this is the "blind spot" illusion at the center of your field of view. In the video Dr. Capwell talks about how the slots work and how the visor on his helmet "disappeared" when he was wearing it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COAIQPsgZWY#t=5204

Here is the link again so you don't have to scroll up and down the comments.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/41945693@N07/



I abandoned the first pattern idea when I tried drilling out the holes and the ends of the slots I had marked.

I went through three bits, and switched to "Plan B" use the dremel to cut a short thin slot, then put the drill through the thin slot (much easier proposition) then use the round chainsaw file to finish cutting the slot to a 5mm width.

Here is the full assembly of the major components. Adjusted the height of the mandible, and the visor adjustment and fitting. The visor works now, and the good news is that the closure pins are going to be a lot less complicated than I had feared they were going to be.

The visor will raise and friction fit up without pins, and I am going to put a sneck hook in the lower right jaw to hold the visor closed. The good news is that the visor fits well enough to have stopping points on the sides where it meets the drape, on the point of the mandible, and I am going to add a "nasal" underneath the centre point of the front crest plate to avoid a horizontal shot going through the eye-slit.











I did bit of fitting and re-shaping to the lower visor and mandible to straighten out (mostly) a twist in the centre line.