The Palazzo Ducale bascinet.

[CLANG]

Found this thread a couple of weeks ago and have backed up to the beginning and followed with great interest. A spectacular achievement, and very inspiring!

If I may offer my $.02 on the shape, the one thing that keeps standing out to me (other than those literal few mm here and there that keep being discussed!) has been the curve of the back. I think that the nape of the neck needs pushed out a bit to undo the graceful curve you've put there. The original seems to have a straighter line. I think your occipital is in the right place from appearances, but that the change needs to come from some added volume at the nape of the neck.

Edited to add: I know you'd mentioned starting the ventail curve higher up, but to me it looks like the center of your arc is in the right place, more or less, it just needs to be less deep.

On another note, what is the current weight like, and what do you expect it to be after grinding? How does it compare to the original?

[Indianer]

This is another take on the notion i had...he may be right.

[Mac]

Found this thread a couple of weeks ago and have backed up to the beginning and followed with great interest. A spectacular achievement, and very inspiring!

If I may offer my $.02 on the shape, the one thing that keeps standing out to me (other than those literal few mm here and there that keep being discussed!) has been the curve of the back. I think that the nape of the neck needs pushed out a bit to undo the graceful curve you've put there. The original seems to have a straighter line. I think your occipital is in the right place from appearances, but that the change needs to come from some added volume at the nape of the neck.

Edited to add: I know you'd mentioned starting the ventail curve higher up, but to me it looks like the center of your arc is in the right place, more or less, it just needs to be less deep.

On another note, what is the current weight like, and what do you expect it to be after grinding? How does it compare to the original?

Mac, might there be a little too much volume in the back of the head, right at the widest point? I also looked at the cone above that. It does look good to me however, so it´s probably not just a matter of proportion mid-to-top part.

Thank you, Clang and Indi!

I hope to address this today. With luck I'll have some pics of it in an improved state this evening.

Mac

[Mac]

I think I'm getting closer....



Mac

[Indianer]

Overlay now...

As a line of reference I aligned the central crest over the...neck part (black line given). Replica rotated counter-clockwise by 2°.
Visor point and right (in the image) ocular corner do not line up perfectly. The deviation seems to be due to perspective, no value in me pointing out exact dimensions.

Black line: Replica
Red line: Original

PDB Overlay 1.JPG (57.9 KiB) Viewed 1 time

[Mac]

Edited to add: I know you'd mentioned starting the ventail curve higher up, but to me it looks like the center of your arc is in the right place, more or less, it just needs to be less deep.

Mark,

We are on the same page, but your description of the problem is better than mine. I've been working on reducing the depth of the curves in the front and back, where they are straighter than over the shoulders. That turns out to be a bit trickier than it sounds like it should be. The curvature on my big RR track is less than what I want, but I still end up over curved. I have to work at an angle across the track to get the curve I need.

On another note, what is the current weight like, and what do you expect it to be after grinding? How does it compare to the original?

I have not weighed anything since cutting out the original pieces. That said... I am sure that it will end up a bit lighter than the original. I started with .075" for the skull, because the .082 looked too thick. In retrospect, I should have used the heavier stuff.

Mac

[Mac]

Overlay now...

As a line of reference I aligned the central crest over the...neck part (black line given). Replica rotated counter-clockwise by 2°.
Visor point and right (in the image) ocular corner do not line up perfectly. The deviation seems to be due to perspective, no value in me pointing out exact dimensions.

Black line: Replica
Red line: Original

PDB Overlay 1.JPG

Thanks!

Mac

[Mac]

I've been reducing the volume of the back of the cone, and that seems to be helping.

This is today's attempt at this rather vexing angle.



Mac

[CLANG]

Trying to /uncurve/ a 3D curve in a definite way is definitely a challenge! I'm a big tool-maker, so I'd probably be thinking, "new stake", but that probably puts me farther from the mind-set of a period armorer. I can see laying it caddy-cornered across a horn and pushing from the inside onto the "straight" part of the horn. Stubby hammers...

Your new lines definitely look better. Try this on for size, though: I took your pic of the original and just by eye laid 2 straight lines along the 2 (sorta) straight parts of the back curve. I then lifted the exact same lines from that pic and dropped them on top of your repro. At least from the given point of view, the angle on the upper cone looks close to spot-on. Where the "vertical" angle leans away from vertical, though, is just about opposite between the 2 objects. It's a small discrepancy, to be sure, but it is there and it is visible.

This may already be very apparent to you, but I thought it might help to clarify things by looking at /angles/ instead of curves, just for a different take on things.

As always, anything perceived as criticism is intended purely constructively. Your skill and attention to detail are much admired on this end.

On a side-note, this is one of those helmets that always makes me pause whenever I'm passing a pic of it on the way to something else, and I think, "That helmet is so cool." I've always been surprised by the apparent thickness of the chest-to-back part of the ventail, and wondered if it was for a fat guy or what was up with it. It wasn't until I was studying your reconstruction that I really noticed a lot of other details, like the very wide mouth. Someone (I think you) pointed out early in the discussion that there's more than a passing resemblance between the visor of the Chartres armor and this one. I find that point very interesting, but I'm not sure what we can really draw from it, given the PDB's lack of precedents. Food for thought, I guess.

[Tom B.]

I concur with Mark's comments.
I was mulling over the best way to explain what I was seeing but I think his mark ups show it well.

As the original PDB curves up in the back from the skirt to the skull it seems to approach vertical but not but not curve back past vertical.
Your's definitely curves back past vertical in the section from the nape up to the occipital region.

I ma not sure if the skull needs to go in or the nape needs to come out, maybe a bit of both?

[Mac]

Thank you, Mark and Tom!

I had hoped that I was done working that area, but I see that you are right. I'll try to have that looking better today.

Mac

[Grischa]

That is a great project and a great thread! I just realised that i would have started grinding and finishing on page 6. And i would have been happy and proud

[Signo]

You are right, armouring is an art than is scalable almost indefinitely, sadly this is true both for the upward and downward direction. for this reason you can have to an extreme cheap indian "thingy" that can't fit a human being, and to the other extreme an artist that is 5 pages into tweaking a piece that look always the same at first look, but is making the best effort to match his work with the original, to a millimetric level.

[Mac]

That is a great project and a great thread! I just realised that i would have started grinding and finishing on page 6. And i would have been happy and proud

Thank you, Grischa!

It wasn't a bad helmet on page 6, but it wasn't the right helmet.

In order to draw meaningful conclusions about how the original helmet worked, the replica has to be accurate enough that any and all reasonable people agree that it's sufficient. Realistically, if the helmet sits on the head so that the lower edge of the ventail and the eyes are all in the right places, it doesn't really matter what happens in the rest of the shape. It doesn't matter if the point is shaped correctly, and it doesn't matter if the back of the head is identical. But... as long as someone can point to a discrepancy, there is doubt about the veracity of the reconstruction. Thus, in addition to satisfying myself, I have to satisfy everybody else as well.

Mac

[Mac]

I have lost track of how many times I've rolled my photographic backdrop up and down. It's right in the middle of the shop, and I can't really do any work on the helmet while it's down. So... up and down I climb, and up and down goes the white sheet.

The back of the helmet is certainly getting closer. "Back" I say... from this view, the horizon is really about 2" (50mm) from the centerline. It looks like there's still too much curve in the horizon of the ventail in this view. This is the sort of thing that is easier to see once I've got the images posted.



Since the last photo, the eyes and mouth have been opened up. I'll see if I can stage a pic from inside the helmet later today.

Mac

[Aussie Yeoman]

What setup do you have for your photographic backdrop?

Are you manually hanging a sheet every time? If so, would it not be more convenient to install a roller blind on the ceiling? A second hand one could be had at low expense, and the time saving would mean it'd 'pay' for itself pretty quickly.

Just a thought.

[Mac]

What setup do you have for your photographic backdrop?

Are you manually hanging a sheet every time? If so, would it not be more convenient to install a roller blind on the ceiling? A second hand one could be had at low expense, and the time saving would mean it'd 'pay' for itself pretty quickly.

Just a thought.

It's a bit better than just hanging a sheet, Dave... but only a bit better.

The sheet is wrapped around a PVC pipe which is supported by a couple of wooden brackets. It'a a lot wider than I need for a helmet, but only barely enough for a full armor on the stand.





This steel pin is something new (two days, I think). It replaces a needle-nosed-vicegrips which had kept the thing rolled up since I installed the backdrop for the St. Florian project. Perhaps I'll even replace the C-clamps some day.

Mac

[Mac]

I took a little break from the monotony of planishing to investigate a thing that occurred to me. It may be that having the right ventail sholder a bit higher than the left makes it easier to couch a lance. When I put the lance under my left arm, my shoulder tends to strike the ventail, but when it is under the right, I have some clearance. This may or may not really be "a thing", of course, but it will be interesting to see what others find when they try.



.....now, back to planishing.

Mac

[Mac]

The breaths on the original visor are slightly wider on the outside than the inside, so I've taken a square tapered reamer to them.



Mac

[Gustovic]

Any reason for the countersunk holes? On the original I mean. Is it a product of the tool used for punching?

[James Arlen Gillaspie]

Yes (possibly) and yes. I keep meaning to ask Sean Powell if there might be some sort of Venturi effect that increases air flow.

[CLANG]

In the Paggiarino Churburg book there's a nice shot of the inside of a bascinet visor where you can distinctly see a lump behind each breath hole, indicating that they were, if not punched from the get-go, at least drifted somewhat to size afterward.

Also, I'm amazed that you were able to make yourself recreate the less-than-perfect arrangement of the breath-holes on this helmet, given your known OCD. Or maybe this is just another facet of it.

With the cutting out of the breaths, this helmet just came to life!

An interesting take on the asymmetry question. Makes a lot of sense. A lot of armor features that seem wonky to us who are accustomed to armoring the infantry make perfect sense when related to cavalry.

[Sean M]

Do you think the breaths would have originally been hot-punched? Someone on MyArmoury points out that this could be one reason that sword pommels are not always centred on the tang and in the exact same plane as the blade.

Mac, I am glad that this is moving into the finishing stages! When I was looking through Victor Gay's book, I notice that he has a pencil drawing of this under armure. He knew it was sexy and old and unusual even if he did not know anyone who could make one for him

I think this will call for a stuffing covered in taffeta.

[Mac]

It's a very interesting question; "how were the holes made in visors".

If a hole is made in a piece of sheet metal with a hand held punch, there has to be some sort of backing or bolster. This might be a sort of stake with a hole in it, or it might be a piece of wood. In either case, the resulting punched hole will exit in a sort of volcano-like cone on the inside of the plate. The outside of the plate will have a corresponding depression. This is the pre-industrial version of the minute burr and "roll in" that a modern punch and die produce. This deformation needs to be hammered back to restore the plate's shape. The result will be a conical hole of roughly (but not truly) circular shape.

There are problems with applying this idea to pointy visors.......
--The first is getting a punching bolster into the places where the holes must be.
--The second is hammering the deformation back out of places where one can't reach with a hammer.

One might get around the first problem by filing the visor with a fusible metal (lead, tin, or a combination thereof). That would provide the needed resistance to make punching possible, even in hard to reach places. The fusible metal could be melted out later, and the punch slugs would float up into the dross, to be skimmed out before the metal got used in the next visor.

The resulting holes would still have some depression on the outside, though. That leaves us having to hammer the surface back up. That might not be so bad if we have a bicorn or other tool that will reach into the point, to support it while we hammer from the outside. That would remove the local deformation, but it's difficult to achieve a nice sweeping curve over a horn. The shape would have to be refined in a further "forging over air" operation. That would distort the holes slightly, but it's probably not a thing the period maker would have been bother by.

Now.. the problem with the process I outlined above is that it would not leave us with the internal bulge that characteristically surrounds the insides of bascinet visor holes. The holes would look right, and the outside of the visor would be right, but the inside would be too smooth.

Here is what I think might be procedure to give the right results...
--Fill the visor with fusible metal
--Punch the holes with an undersized punch. (this will make rather a small "roll in" around the holes)
--Chisel open the eyes and mouth as applicable
--Melt out the fusible metal
--Open the holes up to size with a tapered reamer. (a "four-square" reamer will remove some metal, and force the rest up around the hole on both side of the plate... depending on how sharp its corners are)
--Grind away the forced up metal on the outside of the hole.

I have not tried this, but I think it's worth some experimentation. The holes of the PDB are rather small, and do not show much (if any) bulge on the inside, so I didn't think this was the time or place for those experiments.

Mac

[edited to include mention of opening eyes/mouth in procedure]

[Mac]

When I was looking through Victor Gay's book, I notice that he has a pencil drawing of this under armure. He knew it was sexy and old and unusual even if he did not know anyone who could make one for him

Sean,

Can you post a pic of V.G's image?.. or a link to where it might be found. I'm interested in seeing old representations of the helmet.. in case there is anything that has changed.

We can (for example) see in this image that there may have been something left of the lining, back around the turn of the 19/20th century.

I think this will call for a stuffing covered in taffeta.

Of my! That sort of scares me a bit. I've never worked up a lining with a nice fabric layer. Do they appear often in inventories, etc? Does it seem to be common enough that I really should do it?

Mac

[Sean M]

Sean,

Can you post a pic of V.G's image?.. or a link to where it might be found. I'm interested in seeing old representations of the helmet.. in case there is anything that has changed.

Found it! Volume A-H, page 40 https://archive.org/stream/glossairearc ... 0/mode/2up



I did not notice those gray traces of leathers in the old B&W photo.

Oh my! That sort of scares me a bit. I've never worked up a lining with a nice fabric layer. Do they appear often in inventories, etc? Does it seem to be common enough that I really should do it?

Mac

That is one of the things which the article we have been talking about by email will discuss.

Perhaps the best known armour linings are the suspension linings of many helmets. Lining makes the pressure of the helmet on the head less uncomfortable, absorbs sweat, allows one helmet to be fitted to a variety of bodies, and gives the helmet room to move under blows. Datini's clerks called these calotte (“caps”) or farsate (“quilted linings”). They were normally made of tela (linen fabric) or zendado (“cendal,” in Italy a plain-weave silken cloth) but sometimes of boccaccino (a fabric containing cotton) or even velvet (velluto). The linen was sometimes of a particular colour (vermillion, pink {rossa}, sky-blue {azzura}, bioda {blonde/natural coloured?} or white) while the colour of the boccasino or cendal was less often specified (vermillion, pink, sky-blue, black, or white). The handful of examples of velvet were dyed luxurious colours: most often black, but in one case di grano (probably the bright red ‘crimson’ extracted from the insect kermes).

Sometime between 1345 and 1349, John of Cologne invoiced Edward III for 16 pavillions for pisans: 12 were of cotton and English linen, 4 of cotton, reinforced sindon, and French linen.

My feel is that an Italian bascinet of steel with brass borders and a steel camail by "one of the masters who do better work," the kind that costs 10-20 florins, would probably have a lining of zendado or velvet, while the iron ones with an iron camail that cost 3-4 florins would be more likely to have a linen lining.

Edit: Of course, it would be easier to justify using silk cloth and really nice linen if you had a customer lined up to pay 35-70 grams of fine gold (USD 1900-3800 at today's gold price) on delivery

[Roland Ansbacher]

Does it necessarily have to be a fusible metal? I wonder if pitch of some sort may have been used, if it was punched rather then drilled.

On the drilling of metal. I've drilled fairly thick brass (1/16, I think) with a pump drill, with no bolster on the back side. I used a flat drill bit, which looks like a pointed chisel. My terminology might be off, I have no idea what it may actually be called! The tip was basically \/ shaped. Anyhow, I was drilling a domed piece of brass, and as I was drilling through, I noticed that before the bit pierced the brass, the thin metal was stretched and created a bump. I was giving it quite a bit of pressure, but even with the least amount of pressure that would still bite, the edges of the drilled hole still stretched a bit, leaving a burr and slight indent around the inside edge.

It looked sort of like a crater on the inside, with a raised edge before the tear out, with a slightly shallower indent on the outside. Sort of like what you get from using a punch with a bolster that has a larger hole then is ideal. I don't know how this compares to the appearance of the hole on the inside of a bascinet.

[Gustovic]

Sean,

Can you post a pic of V.G's image?.. or a link to where it might be found. I'm interested in seeing old representations of the helmet.. in case there is anything that has changed.

Found it! Volume A-H, page 40 https://archive.org/stream/glossairearc ... 0/mode/2up



I did not notice those gray traces of leathers in the old B&W photo.

So it did still have the brass trim on the bottom edge. Very sad to see that it was still on until relatively recent times .

[Mac]

So it did still have the brass trim on the bottom edge. Very sad to see that it was still on until relatively recent times .

That's exactly the sort of thing I wanted (and yet didn't want) to see.

It certainly looks like the brass was still there on the ventail. On the other hand, he may have just taken a cue from the patina and drew what clearly used to be there.

It would be a great shame if someone had stripped the brass in modern times...

Mac

[Mac]

Found it! Volume A-H, page 40 https://archive.org/stream/glossairearc ... 0/mode/2up

Thank you, Sean! I was able to bind Victor G's book online, but gave up when the image was not under "armure"

I did not notice those gray traces of leathers in the old B&W photo.

Those traces have been sort of creeping up on my consciousness for a while, and I finally had the "hey, wait a minute!" thought a couple of days ago.

That is one of the things which the article we have been talking about by email will discuss.

Perhaps the best known armour linings are the suspension linings of many helmets. Lining makes the pressure of the helmet on the head less uncomfortable, absorbs sweat, allows one helmet to be fitted to a variety of bodies, and gives the helmet room to move under blows. Datini's clerks called these calotte (“caps”) or farsate (“quilted linings”). They were normally made of tela (linen fabric) or zendado (“cendal,” in Italy a plain-weave silken cloth) but sometimes of boccaccino (a fabric containing cotton) or even velvet (velluto). The linen was sometimes of a particular colour (vermillion, pink {rossa}, sky-blue {azzura}, bioda {blonde/natural coloured?} or white) while the colour of the boccasino or cendal was less often specified (vermillion, pink, sky-blue, black, or white). The handful of examples of velvet were dyed luxurious colours: most often black, but in one case di grano (probably the bright red ‘crimson’ extracted from the insect kermes).

Sometime between 1345 and 1349, John of Cologne invoiced Edward III for 16 pavillions for pisans: 12 were of cotton and English linen, 4 of cotton, reinforced sindon, and French linen.

My feel is that an Italian bascinet of steel with brass borders and a steel camail by "one of the masters who do better work," the kind that costs 10-20 florins, would probably have a lining of zendado or velvet, while the iron ones with an iron camail that cost 3-4 florins would be more likely to have a linen lining.

Edit: Of course, it would be easier to justify using silk cloth and really nice linen if you had a customer lined up to pay 35-70 grams of fine gold (USD 1900-3800 at today's gold price) on delivery

I'll look into silk when I get to that phase.

Mac

[Mac]

Does it necessarily have to be a fusible metal? I wonder if pitch of some sort may have been used, if it was punched rather then drilled.

That's a good point, Roland. I was thinking fusable metals because they are familiar to me and something I have in the shop. Pitch might work just fine. Again, it's time for someone to do the experiments. Hint hint...

On the drilling of metal. I've drilled fairly thick brass (1/16, I think) with a pump drill, with no bolster on the back side. I used a flat drill bit, which looks like a pointed chisel. My terminology might be off, I have no idea what it may actually be called! The tip was basically \/ shaped. Anyhow, I was drilling a domed piece of brass, and as I was drilling through, I noticed that before the bit pierced the brass, the thin metal was stretched and created a bump. I was giving it quite a bit of pressure, but even with the least amount of pressure that would still bite, the edges of the drilled hole still stretched a bit, leaving a burr and slight indent around the inside edge.

Drills like that were pretty much all they had until some time in the 19th C. They still have there place in clock and watch work, as they are easy to make, easy to resharpen, and do not catch and break like twist drills. You can make them so they cut in only one direction, or use a symmetrical bevel which lets them cut (scrape, really) both ways.

Such a drill, followed by a reamer might be a good way to proceed. This is another place where we need to experiment.

It looked sort of like a crater on the inside, with a raised edge before the tear out, with a slightly shallower indent on the outside. Sort of like what you get from using a punch with a bolster that has a larger hole then is ideal. I don't know how this compares to the appearance of the hole on the inside of a bascinet.

I'll see if I can find a pic of a typical visor hole to post. I may have to take something out of one of Carlo's books and hope that such a detail can be considered "fair use" in this context.

Mac

[Mac]

I've been staring at that B/W photo of the helmet with it's visor open and wondering about that area which may or may not be old lining. It occurred to me that we might be seeing a highlight off the edge of the facial. Since this photo has probably had its background cropped away, there is a possibility that the horizon has not been truly represented. So.. I set up my helmet to try to replicate the shot and see whether I can tell if that's a possibility.



This seems to show that the grey area is not a cropping artifact. That lends a bit of credence to the idea that we are seeing a lining in the old pic.

This view of my helmet also shows how I need to change the transition from the ventail to the cheek. If it's not one thing, it's another. Oh well... ten minutes of hot work, fifteen minutes of planishing, and another half hour getting the visor to fit the new shape. That's nothing on the grand scale.

Mac

[Sean M]

Thank you, Sean! I was able to bind Victor G's book online, but gave up when the image was not under "armure"

I am puzzled why it is on the page with AQUAMANILE too. Laying out a book in the 1880s was a scissors-and-glue affair, we are lucky that he included this drawing. I am glad it is of interest even if the brass is a puzzle! It sure looks like he thought the camail had an applied border.

We forget about him today because he wrote in French and died over a century ago, but Victor Gay was a mensch: his drawings are trustworthy and he tells you where all the texts he quotes come from. I think he was an architect who collected and studied medieval things as a hobby.

[Mac]

I'll see if I can find a pic of a typical visor hole to post. I may have to take something out of one of Carlo's books and hope that such a detail can be considered "fair use" in this context.

Mac

Here's one that shows metal "piled up" around the insides of the visor breaths. This is the visor from the the bascinet in Philly.



Mac

[Gustovic]

Lyle bascinet visor.



Armeria Reale, Torino.



They seem to be in the minority though. The other visors seem to have "clean" holes.