Hi all,It's been a while since I posted any of my work here, but felt this was worth showing.
This was a collaborative project for my own use, between myself and Per Lillilund Jensen of Denmark which began during his visit for the month of October 2003. Since the visit was something of a "job interview" for Per, I wanted to see what Per could do with raising. We thought at first of making a fluted kettle hat per the example in the MMA, NY, but settled on a great bascinet based primarily on that belonging to Frederich the Victorious, now in Vienna. I'm now very glad we chose what we did. The idea was to create a helmet that could be a cousin of the original, perhaps out of the same workshop but not a strict 'copy', with the potential of interchanging visors for joust, war and tourney. The first intended visor was to be one based on the Ulrich IX helmet in Churburg, also of Massaglia manufacture, like the Vienna helmet.
Per raised the skull of 13 ga mild steel, and formed the ventail and gorget plate of 14 ga mild. The front sides of the bowl are nearly 3/16" thick now, quite astonishingly. I raised the visor.
Per got most of the forming done before he had to go home, so it was my job to refine the shape and symetricality, then make the visors, fittings and do the finish work. I didn't get back to the project until July this year, with the intent of completing it for the jousts at Leeds in August, but once I got into it I realized I wouldn't have time to complete the project AND have time to practice in it, which seemed vitally important, given that I've jousted in an armet so far, which moves with the head, where the bascinet wouldn't. The visor is raised from .062" 1050 spring steel, but I left it normalized because I didn't want to chance possible deformation in heat treatment. It's still quite tough, nonetheless.
As is usually the case with my personal projects, I ended up working on the helmet piecemeal in between client jobs and got it to this stage a couple of weeks ago. It's assembled but still needs a liner and cuirass straps.
It was a fun project and great to work with Per as a colleague. I'm anxious to try the helm out now, and eventually make more visors for it. It's my hope that more of my jouster colleagues will begin using helmets of this general style, as it will give us more options for targets.
[ 11-12-2004: Message edited by: hauptmann ]
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posted 11-11-2004 01:16 PM
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