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The Sixth Pass
By the end of the sixth pass, the helmet bowl is getting pretty deep.
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The Eighth Pass
By the eighth pass, I began getting close to the center. It has been hammered down to meet the 8" mushroom stake. When the helmet is deep enough, the point will be defined by pushing metal up to it, thereby greatly thickening it. |
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The Ninth Pass
By the ninth pass I started pushing metal up to make the point. The bowl is still pretty round, so the next few passes will concentrate on pushing the sides in the make it more elliptical. |
The Sides
Here you can see where the side were raised inward. The soapstone marks (in white) show the arcs that were worked towards the edge to bring them in. |
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The Twelfth Pass
By the twelfth pass you can see that it is looking more like a conical helmet. More metal has been pushed up to the point and the sides have been drawn in some more. The bottom edge is rough and ragged from where the metal was compressed. |
Ready for Trimming
Here the helmet is pretty close to its final shape. The bottom edge and the lines of where the creases will be are marked in soapstone. The next step is to trim off the bottom edge and then hammer the creases in. |
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Trimmed
The rough bottom edge has been trimmed off and filed. The bottom edge increase slightly in thickness. This area scaled the most during the heating, but any losses from scaling are offset from the thickening produced by the raising process. |
Planished
At this point the helmet has been planished smooth and the front and back creases have been hammered in.
It is now ready for grinding and polishing. |
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Ground, Polished, and Liner Attached
The helmet is now finished. After planishing, it is ground smooth of all hammer marks. Then the helmet is polished through successively finer grits until it has a smooth, "satin" finish. A quilted linen liner stuffed with tow has been sewn to a leather strip, which is riveted to the bottom edge of the helmet. |
Linen Liner
This picture shows the quilted linen liner. It is made in four quarters attached with a drawstring at the top, making it slightly adjustable. |
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