[Aaron Schneiker]

I am in the process of putting together a Mac Bible (c.1250) period kit. My goal is to have everything in it made by myself. My question is on the great helm. Ive only seen a couple of reproductions made and they vary quite significantly. First of all, i'm assuming that the Mac Bible is the only place a helm like this appears and that every piece pictured is done so from a side view only? This being the case, it is left up to some interpretation. I believe all of the repros that I have seen are barrel shaped as the one I have pictured from medieval repro. As I look at the pictures from the Mac Bible it looks to me like the front would have to come to a point for one to see the half of the nasal reinforcement that is pictured. It looks like there is a helm in the works at Albion that may come to a point, but I am not absolutely sure since there is only one side view pic posted. As of now I am leaning heavily toward making mine look like "option2" from the top of helm view picture I included unless someone out there can show me evidence to the contrary.

Thanks,
-Aaron

[Felix Wang]

I am not sure the front of these barrel type helms were ridged. The later great helms definitely were, but the precursors of the barrel helm, with only the face guard (and not wrapping around the back of the head) were not ridged. Off hand, the only image I can find is this effigy: http://www.fioredeiliberi.org/gallery/album42/blyth which doesn't seem to show a midline ridge that I can see.

On further searching, http://home.tiscali.be/klauwaer/helm/ does clearly show some helms from above, with a midline ridge - so it looks like you should be good to go.

[Matt G]

Hi Aaron,

Here's a couple of images of two Maciejowski-style helms. Although I can't make claims to the authenticity of the design, these helms do appear to have the raised area under the nasal similar to your option 2 diagram. In these pictures, It doesn't appear that the raised area is very prominent.

http://www.outfit4events.com/index.php?main_p...cts_id=431

http://www.outfit4events.com/index.php?main_p...cts_id=427

[Bruno Giordan]

Don't forget that ocular's floral decorations were painted, not brass.

An helm reproduced in wrought iron and wit golden-painted occulars would be a real hit, looking once upon a time historical in the true sens of this word.

Then there was no polished stainles steel (armor was polished by rolling pieces inside a barrel full of river sand, in the fifties my father in law would still use this method to polish metal here in Italy, sand was from the Pò river), and real steel was scarce even in renaissance times, while at the time of great helms I doubt there was any.