[Pieter B.]

I looked at some 15th century Italian helmets and breastplates and noted that some example exhibit dramatic taper from the center or crest toward the sides.

From my understanding raising a helmet from sheet metal would accomplish the opposite with the crest being thinner than the sides (something which I have seen on some earlier helmets). Do we know how they achieved the opposite effect?

The taper on some historical pieces such as the Avant armour is also quite drastic. Did they achieve this with cold or hot working?

A picture like that from the Weisskunig shows cutout blanks, would these sheets be of a uniform thickness or already significantly thicker in the center?



I knew about the varying thickness for a long while but it never occurred to me this might be a challenge to make. I hope some of you can enlighten me.

Kind regards,

[Augusto Boer Bront]

Simple.

You start with a thicker and smaller blank, say 8 mm thick, and forge it down to the desired thickness.

With the right tools the forging will both thin the metal and dish the piece to a decent depth, where then it can be shaped with normal raising like most modern armourers do.

Armourers had either strikers with sledge hammers or water powered trip hammers at their disposal. Armouring was no single man operation.

[Pieter B.]

Thanks Augusto!

Do you reckon that while the initial hammering of say the 8mm blank would be done hot the latter raising was done entirely cold?

Kind regards,

[Augusto Boer Bront]

[Pieter B.]

[Augusto Boer Bront]

Something like a 30% loss, from rough blank to finished product.

But that was my personal experience, and only now other smiths are taking this technique seriously and experimenting with it in a serious way. So in the next couple of years we'll be able to know a whole lot more about those details.