I am contemplating drilling more breaths into the houndskull visor of my bascinet in order to have better visibility.

Would it be completely out of character to mirror the breaths pattern from the right side to the left side where there are currently none? Many of the historical examples found on myArmoury and elsewhere show only one side of the helm making me pause before drilling. Would anyone have a picture of a historical example and/or an opinion to share?

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Well, you probably already know this, but I've heard that the left side was left holeless because that is the side most likely to receive the end of a lance or other blow. The stronger that side the better was the theory, although I'm sure somewhere is an exception.

I know some examples I seen had small lil openings (like lips) at the bottom of the visor. Not sure if yours does or not.

Scott,
Check out your copy of Curtis' 2,500 Years of European Helmets. Page 61 shows breaths on the left side (assuming the picture negative isn't flipped).

There are a couple in the Curtis book and one or two in the German book Europaische Helme that show some breaths surrounding the edge of the opening near the mouth (under the beak). See below.

Obviously holes under the beak won't do much for visibility, but might help airflow. It seems to have been more common to pierce one side only, though at least 1 example exists with the left side pierced.

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Bascinet from Museum fur Deutsches Geschichte

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Another option would be to drill a single row of holes in the bottom edge of both your occulars, as shown in this bascinet from the spotlight article.

[ Linked Image ]

Also, I think that this bascinet has holes in both sides.

My Valentine armoury Bascinet has 5 breath holes on the left side that form a cross pattern or a central hole and 4 holes forming a diamond pattern.

There is a second vision slit on the under side of the snout that is the same on both sides and is made up of a series of closely spaced rectangular vertical slots with rounded top and bottom: This does make it easier to see a bit what is coming from below.

The small 5 holes on the left side don't improve vision very much although one might be conscious of movement on that side and it probably helps a little bit with air flow.

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I think I may have found the perfect answer at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. I don't know why I didn't think of this bascinet as it's pictured in many armour books along with the (in)famous brigandine reconstruction.

While there are fewer breaths on the left side of the visor, they are all located on the lower portion of the snout which is exactly the direction I'm "blind" to incoming shots.

Quote:

The helmet, a type known as a visored bascinet, was not part of the Chalcis find, but dates from about the same period.

Does anyone know more about this particular bascinet?

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art

I finally got around to drilling my bascinet visor with breaths on the left side. I simply made a template of the right side breaths and flipped it over. The results look OK and the visibility is 100% improved. :)

I've included some more inspirational photographs as well.

I can't wait until practice next week. :D

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