The Armour Archive

Well, the subject says it all. What are some of your favorite ways to attach the front part of an aventail to the bottom of a non-moveable helmet grill for SCA combat?

The rest of the aventail in question is laced to a leather band which is in turn attached by vervelles to the helmet. Thanks for any suggestions.

How about a pic of the helm? OK you caught me, its my helm request, but I'd still love to see it. Thanks, Chris

Most of my customers either lace or wire them on. Lots if individual laces/wires seems to hold up better than one long spiral lace/wire. There is no historic precideent that I know of so you are realy on your own.

Master Knuut, it is your aventail being attached! This is Great!

You could just let it hang under the client's chin -- see pics I posted ("Thaden bascinet and russian aventail"). If the aventail has those essential triangles that go up to the temples, it should be fine just attached to the sides and back.

Hey Clang,
Why are you attaching the aventail to the grill? Is this for a marshallete rule?
-Cad

I'll second Dmitry here. Hanging the camail behind the grill face would gain points for historicity, and can be made very stable by lining the camail in the manner described in the Firestryker LH board. With the camail stitched to the liner top, you can sit the camail over your chin and just under your upper lip, and just about forget it. This is an approach I recommend with a deep bar grill that reaches below and inside the point of the chin, so that no sword point could wedge up between camail and bar grill to, ah, pick your nose!

On the other mitt gaunt, however, wiring the camail front to the base of an immovable bar grill offers rather more spaced defense in front of the throat. This has become less urgent now that practically everyone mandates supplementary gorgets. A big piece of your decision will, I think, be the length and depth of the bar grill.

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"The Minstrel Boy to the war is gone..."

Well, let's see...

The grill comes fairly well below the chin, but leaving the maille unattached could possibly leave an opening for a freak shot if the wearer's head was leaning far back, so I'm really just thinking maximum safety here. And as one of you mentioned, this arrangement is about as safe as you can get for the throat. Because the grill does come down reasonably far, it wouldn't look quite right to pull the top edge of the aventail up under it to emulate the period wearing. It does have the triangles, BTW-that was one reason why my client (Hi, Chris!) decided to go with one of Master Knuut's long aventails. It is a very excellent aventail, BTW-thin flat stainless wire that is welded. Looks like riveted at first glance and the weight is quite reasonable, unlike so many other SCA aventails.

As to the authenticity part-since the helm has a fixed bargrill, it's not exactly accurate anyway... (And yes, I know about the ONE iconographic reference to a barred bascinet , but this is a different arrangement.) It's intended to be a representation of an open-faced bascinet. The main concerns I have here and now are safety, comfort, and practicality. If it looked as right as possible, that wouldn't hurt either...

I'll try to get a pic posted tomorrow.

Hard to judge without the picture, but I'd still say don't attach it to the grill. I've never seen aventails attached to grills look good. Chris will have to wear a gorget under the aventail anyway..

-Dmitriy

Also attaching the aventail directly to the grill tends to generate some awkward balance issues, in my experience anyway. It was like haveing a weight hanging out about two inches from my nose, kept tending to drag my head forward, particularly after a long day.

I suggest lacing it on with sinew.

Or I have hear that duct tape works very well.

Konstantin, can you post a link to the post on the LH board you referenced?

I'd like to read it, but can't seem to locate it.

Brutus

Yarf! no wonder, since it doesn't happen to say FireStryker anywhere in the link -- though a search on the term should have gotten you there. Anyhoo, here it is:

http://www.wolfeargent.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi

Enjoy!

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"The Minstrel Boy to the war is gone..."

And this is the specific thread I had in mind, with the relevant post by our ever-helpful Chef de Chambre, and a more detailed expatiation by Hauptmann a couple posts further down:

http://www.wolfeargent.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=000104

[This message has been edited by Konstantin the Red (edited 11-06-2002).]