The Armour Archive

I found a helmet top I had made over 10 years ago and decided to try to do something with it and ended up with this. It was a lot more work than just making it from scratch and not trying to re-use old parts. The surface finish is ugly as sin and I got to the point I just wanted to finish it and make it useable so I gave up on it. I had to do something similar to a can construction but I didn't use heat. Just annealed in a kiln then beat on it with the heaviest hammer I could find. It's 14 mild and rigged up for SCA with the bevor welded to the helmet and some bar work going from the bevor to the back of the helmet. I was kind of going for something similar to the one in the picture. If you squint and look at it from 20 feet away it's kinda similar? The next piece I make I am going to try to give it a decent finish and not blacken it. It Needs the line and chin strap still and I might paint something on it to hide the roughness.

After looking at the original, I think your rolled edges are too even.

For a salvage-project with a not too protuberant brim (generally a plus in SCA helmets) it looks well enough like a munition-grade sallet. Think you could yet even out the sight any? Observe the bottom edge of the starboard side of the sight. A bit of wary work with a bastard-cut file might true it up well. Or any other equivalent like 36-grit auto abrasive glued on the flat of a paint stirrer, maybe then 100 grit to polish.

While a bit of lance-lip to the bottom of the sight wouldn't have been amiss at all, it also may be a bit much to ask. About the nearest you'd get to the somewhat prognathous set of the museum example's face below the sights would have been to bend it out there somewhat. I think they started with more metal there on the museum piece.

I first started out trying for more of a kettle style with a ocular and something went horribly wrong and it ended up into this. I agree the sight is rough, I was having a hard time getting a stake or something behind it to clean it up and to get the protruding shape I would have had to account for that in my pattern without using heat. Here is some early pics when it looked really bad.

Nope, those stages aren't "really bad." Just not finished yet. Yeah, I thought as much -- the museum piece would have had considerably more metal up front to make its concave part of the profile and the jutting lower edge of the sight.

Hotworked helmets never really look good until they're almost done, having reached the only minimally lumpy stage.