| James Arlen Gillaspie wrote: |
| Notice how the inside of the morion looks like a concave version of the surface of the moon, but the comb is much smoother; that is the only place you see anything that looks like planishing. No way was that skull part of a stack. |
How would you form a deep-combed helmet from a single plate, using historical technology? I would proceed by thinning the centre of a lentoid plate to form a deep dome from the inside, then turn the helmet over a comb stake and compress the top part of the dome inward over the stake, before refining, forming the brim, edging, etc. The tool marks I would expect to see would be heavy hammer marks inside the calotte, and a more refined surface inside the comb, where it had been hammered against the stake - like what we see in the example you posted.
Using this general process, but wanting to make more efficient use of heat and force (if it was available), I would make a stack of plates and form the deep domes from it before disassembling the stack and proceeding to form combs, as before. I don't have any experience forming helmets in stacks, but I have drawn out sheet in stacks, and there are conspicuous hammer marks on every layer of the stack.
So, what evidence does the morion posted above offer to dismiss the possibility that part of its forming happened in a stack?