I am making a helmet that was found on the territory of Ukraine! This unique find is not very typical for these lands. www.armorysmith... Support the Channel - / armorysmith
Another truly beautiful piece of work, my friend. I am still looking at historical sources so that I can order a second (more breathable) visor when I purchase your Churburg helm.
Ah! I was just looking for this yesterday only to find out it hadn't been posted, so I watched the video on the main channel and was distracted by the subtitles the whole time. Nice!
The bascinet was so popular six+,centuries back because of its excellent glancing surfaces versus sword strikes and lances. This was quite a revelation to the Creatve Anachronists when we started making and using bascinets increasingly during the late 1970s. We had been accustomed to buckets, spangenhelms, and a family of what could be called domes -- symmetrical rounded affairs of various plans of construction. We found if we did not strike precisely, very close to normal to the surface, these helmets slipped the blows. Bascs are now very common, often constructed as heavy as 14 gauge or 12.
It took a couple more centuries before they got confident enough to try that kind of assembly. Acetylene welding helps, very much. They tended to start from hot and rough it in quickly, then final shape it cold. Welding sheet can even substitute for the rough forging, welding together a sort of 'house' approximating the shape of the helmet. Then hot-work all those corners and seams into smooth curves.
Its amazing to think that armor wasn't nearly as forge detail intensive as a sword was to make. Like, how the Armourer only needed pre-hammered out sheets of iron or mild steel cut to a rough shape for him to just cold hammer out. Now, the need to forge weld or temper later armor is a different matter entirely.
Working time mainly. Much depends on suitable tools, viz., hammers. I would avoid using the ball pein except for very small pieces and for setting rivets.* Large pieces it takes seemingly forever to planish out the bumps, though I notice this maker seems to planish as he dishes, and forms his curvature with both techniques almost simultaneously, using a shallow dish to do some of his forming. For large pieces I like to use "soft hammer hard anvil" working, using a weighted rawhide mallet such as Garland Mfg makes. It's like a quasi raising process: 'hammer on air' at a point just above where the piece touches the anvil or a large stake. The metal sees the hard, elastic collision with the hard anvil more than with the inelastic collision with the rawhide hammer face, which in effect becomes the stake the sheet metal is being formed over, making a nice smooth curve to it. Very little planishing. Also quick, at least in lighter gauge metal. *The ball-pien hammer face may be gently rounded off or forming also.
Dishing stretches out the metal in the middle of the curvature, and may eventually crack it there. Raising leaves the middle of the piece almost entirely alone, but noodges the periphery down smaller and smaller, so that the metal must bend in 3D. Gradually. You can do pretty much any depth or tightness of curvature with hammer and stake. Not so with the dishing.
I guess by 'sweet iron' you mean what English calls 'mild steel:' low carbon, about 0.15% C to 0.18% C or so. Medium carbon starts about 0.25-0.30% C. The phrase "xx points of Carbon" is also used. 100 points of carbon = 1% carbon, high-carbon you could make razor blades of.
Well that was pathetic. If you watch this video (starting at 30:30) you can see how "unusable" his helmets are. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-z9Qpfb2OS8c.html
