I was noticing the other day while browsing through the armour album here that a couple of the items in the album are ones we have picked up for restoration. I thought you all might be interested in the after shot of the particular cabasset shown here...

http://www.myArmoury.com/albums/photo/4264.html

and here is the finished cabasset...

[ Linked Image ]

This item is listed on our "for sale" page now with a few more pictures and some detailed information. If you're interested you can find that page here...

http://www.masterarmourer.com/antiques_for_sale.htm

I believe a few of the pole weapons shown on our "for sale" page are also from the same auction as that cabasset and may well be pictured in the albums as well.

This second cabasset is being restored currently...

http://www.myArmoury.com/albums/photo/4261.html

should be a rather dramatic turn around for this piece.


Enjoy...

Joe

Joe, thank you for posting this. I'm going to be reading through the site you linked to.. but wanted to first say how fun it is to get a peek into this process.

I'm unsure if you were actually involved int he restoration yourself, but if so, could you be so kind as to share some of the details of the process with us? Some in-progress pictures of some of this stuff would be very educational for many of us collectors of reproductions who have yet been unable to move into antiques.

Cheers.

Wow, I didn't realize how much could be done with restoration. I never would have thought that one could have been brought back so well!

Here's a neat site with some good information: http://nautarch.tamu.edu/napcrl.htm ...click on "conservation manual" for some instructions on preserving artifacts.

They have been helpful for some items I have. It's always fun to inspect their labs just to see the neat stuff they have out there!

Nathan,

Yes I was involved ... I did the lion's share of the restoration work on this particular cabasset. The process was a relatively straight forward one on this project. Though it looks far gone the helm itself was in pretty good shape. Much better in fact that when we purchased the helm. Most of the oxidation was removed with a large scraper. Sanding was avoided to preserve the detailed etching (which is all "trophies of arms" including the cartouches, in case you can't see them well enough) . so quite a bit of elbow grease and the edge of the scraper to get down to the metal. Once we were at clear metal some hand sanding took place in the clear areas. The sanding was stepped from 600 to 800, 1000, 1200 and finally green bar and grey. 1000 and 1200 included the etched areas to bring out the design highlights.

Once the overall surface was brought back to the right level, some of the roping along the brim was refreshed as well as some of the inset lines on the brim. Then brass was cut and filed into the florals, and dished. The rivets are all proper brass capped rivets (brass cut, dished and soldered onto a iron rivet) which were made as well. Oh, and the plume holder was cut and formed as well. Then all the washers and plume holder were attached, browned a bit to tone them down a bit and the whole thing was waxed and buffed up.

That's about it. A pretty straightforward restoration.... certainly compared to that other cabasset. :) The objects we get vary greatly in their condition as well as the clients desired restoration level. Beats a real job.

J

Don,

Sorry, didn't see your post when I responded before. Yes, there is quite a bit you can do with restoration. As you can see by the current cabasset project you can take things that look ready for the bin and turn them into very nice pieces. On our site you can see a Italian cervelliera that had been used as a well bucket and therefore was severely corroded (as seen below ..click to enlarge)

Before
[ Linked Image ]

After
[ Linked Image ]


Armour restoration page


It really all depends on the value of the piece (therefore the return on investment for restoration) and the clients wants. Some items we get in we simply clean, releather and stabilize. Most involve much more involved restoration. Each piece is different.

I would like to point out that conservators do not do this sort of work (at least in the armour field) At the most they do our lowest level of "restoration" which is the clean, releather and stabilize. The skills in the conservator field aren't there to do these sorts of things nor are the funds available to pursue them. Not that I'm putting down the field, it's just a different thing from restoration.

Glad you all found this at least somewhat informative.

J

Joe I just got "Armour From Medieval Rhodes " the other day and had a question based on that . Alot of the Rhodes armour has been restored either at the time of auction back in the 1920's or later in some cases in the museums
in which some of the peices came to reside . The process that seems to have been used across the board for really
perished peices such as the cervallier above was to flush rivet a plate in from behind to fill the in the voids and then
to weld over from the out side and then to abrade back to the original surface level . Is this at all similar to the process
you've used on the cervallier ( if this is a trade secret kinda thing you can tell me to go get stuffed i'm just curious if the process has changed ) ?

Essentially yes, that is the sort of process that is involved in these sorts of things. Again, it does depend a bit on the client and the damage. Some museums (typically not collectors) frown on welding patches directly in (though truthfully this is probably the best for the piece itself). In those cases sometimes the patch is obviously discolored to show what restoration was done. Sometimes when new parts are created (such as missing lames or visor etc) they are attached with bolts instead of rivets so they can be easily removed. It just depends.

It's not really a trade secret for several reasons. One, knowing what to do is much different than knowing how to do it. There is also the issue of knowing what needs to be done, what is missing and often time, just what is it you have in your hands. We often times get pieces in that have been so altered in their lifetime that it really takes an eye just to see what the original item actually was. Case in point was a deaths head helm we worked on recently that had been changed into some strange close helm behourd tourney specific helm. The top support for the bar visor was in fact a lame from a 17th cent tasset that had been repurposed for use on the helm. Once we got the helm all apart we could see what we had and a new visor was fit to the helm to take it back to what it had been.

The detective work is certainly more than half the fun.

J

Thank you Joe . I used to have a pretty large collection of period armour and find this fascinating . If you were to keep posting projects as they develope it wouldn't hurt my feelings any . Would make a great article here to track a peice start to finish . Doesn't happen often but about once a faire season we get some one who's got a piece and wants to get work done . Are referals okay with you ?

Well I'm working on a relaunch of the masterarmour.com site now. We hope to have more extensive outlines of some of our projects when that happens. We also plan on having a "featured item" section to discuss particular extant pieces that we have unpublished photos of. We'll have a couple photos of the item and a brief write up on the unique elements of that piece.

Unfortunately some projects can not be made public as for various reasons the owners of those items do not want them published. Which of course we have to have the owner’s permission to do.

As for referrals, we're always open to new work and would be willing to discuss any project. I'd appreciate any nod our way.

J

What process do you use to patina the replacement steel? You achieve some stunning matches to the restored original iron/steel.