Making a Corinthian Helm?

[SapereAude]

Hello to everyone, this is my first post on the forum, but I've been a long time lurker. I recently have been looking into how the Corinthian helm was made but haven't found much in the way of specifics besides that they were made out of one piece or bronze.

I'm in the process of making my own shield now (shaping the interior now:x )
and wanted to see if a helm could be "home-made" as well. I'm only an amateur in the realm of reproduction armor, however I'm experienced as an artist(working towards a double major art/art history).

Any help would be appreciated, Thanks in advance

[Giannis K. Hoplite]

Wellcome on (the trireme's) board! Could you please add your real name,it's a forum rule.
Well,I think it's a bit optimistic to make your own corinthian,but if you really can do it,you should make profit of it! There are loads of people who would love to see alternative sources for corinthian helmets.
This site might help you,or at least give you an idea.
http://members.aol.com/gijchar/greeknew.htm
Look through other sections of the site,not only the greek one,you might find some more bits of information.
Khaire
Giannis

[SapereAude]

Thank you for the welcome and the link

I had come across that site while doing my research but as you can see the "tutorial" cuts off right before the tricky part, that is, giving it that distinctive Corinthian look. The more I try to wrap my mind around the design and the execution the more I am puzzled as to how these helms were made. After I finish my aspis I'll have to turn my full attention to making a helm by trial and error(hopefully more trials than errors).

Thanks again Giannis, looking forward to more input.

[caiusbeerquitius]

Most of the Corinthian helmets I have seen were cast bronze, if that is of any help.

[Giannis K. Hoplite]

Most of the Corinthian helmets I have seen were cast bronze, if that is of any help.

hock: No way! ALL corinthian helmets were hammered. not one cast one has been found! Where did you read or see that? Even today,very few reproductions are cast,and are very heavy,almost imposible to wear. The fact that they were not cast is one of the reasons asncient greek metallurgist are considered so extraordinary craftsmen,modern metallurgist being unable to reconstruct many of those weapons' characteristics.
Khaire
Giannis

[SapereAude]

I also find it hard to believe that the helms were cast, for a few reasons. I would imagine that the helms would be someone tailored to an individual's head and I also would imagine that the Greek smiths would have also chosen the easiest way to produce them.

Something I learned along my art history career is that the ancient method of bronze casting was very labor intensive, even more so for something hollow. It required a rough mold to be made out of plaster or perhaps clay to shape the inside of the helm. This would then be covered with a layer of wax. The wax would be the part replaced by the bronze, and would be shaped exactly as one would want the helmet to appear. During this step any kind of myriad of design could be added to or carved into the wax, yet from the recovered helms I've seen very few if any have designs on them. The wax was then covered with more plaster leaving a hole in the top from which to poor the bronze in. After the plaster was set, the bronze could be poured in, the heat instantly melting the wax and filling the space it once occupied, producing an exact replica of the wax model. After the bronze cooled the plaster would have to be "smashed" off and the bronze cleaned and polished, and probably still in need of some shaping. The Wax Loss method proper.

This was the way bronze statues had been made in antiquity, the technique going as far back as the Assyrians, perhaps farther. I only elaborate on the process to show that a Greek armorer would probably find more rationale in grabbing his hammer and a sheet of bronze for this specific project as he would have had more control in shaping and maintaining thickness.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

I would agree that they were hammered, although one or two may 'give' the appearance of casting, but I am guessing that is just a result of corrosion! There are even vase paintings of craftsmen hammering at a helmet.....

[SapereAude]

Those are great videos, thank you for those links.

Is that diagram something you made or did you find that somewhere else?

[Matthew Amt]

I certainly want to encourage any budding armorer, but the Corinthian helmet is one of the most difficult pieces of ANY era! The shaping is very subtle and the fit is very close. It can be a lot easier if you build it in several pieces and weld them together, which is standard procedure with most reproductions today. I doubt there are any patterns available--you just have to know how to make your own pattern!

I also agree that helmets were hammered, not cast. They're just too thin! I would love to see more microscopic studies of the metal and the decoration to see how they were done, though. If helmets were cast on a regular basis, shouldn't someone have turned up thousands of broken pieces of clay molds? They should be common, yet I've never heard a mention. Mind you, stuff like that could have been ignored as "boring" except among the few dozen people who actually dig them up!

The work done by modern armorers such as Lonely Mountain Forge proves that an experienced metalworker can hammer out a Corinthian in a day or two, whereas casting one is the job of a couple weeks. And casting can go wrong at any point, ruining the whole piece! Has anyone ever seen a "miscast" helmet? Nope.

Khairete,

Matthew

[Jason Hoffman]

The only corinthian i know of that has be tested by xray at leeds university apears to give a grain structure indicative of hammering, this is not to say that a deep dish was not cast to start the process.

Hi, I in one of many of my guises am a high school metal work teacher. if you want to work plate metal there are only two things you can do with it stretch it or shrink it. The theory of helmet making is either stretch (dish) or shrink (raising). my personal opinion is that if i was going to make a corinthian i would avoid both and cast a cup shape peice of metal and just keep hammering and annealing until i arrived at the correct size and then use embossing techniques to finish it.

Be aware that if you are going to make one out of brass or bronze you have to reverse all the anealing things you have learnt about steel. heating and quentching steel makes it hard but bronze and brass it makes them soft. If working bronze expect to anneal it about ten times more often than you would brass. It is trully a pain to work but very rewarding when you have finished

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

This is an interesting thread! Good points raised all around!
This is info I have been looking for for some time.....

[caiusbeerquitius]

Well, if you are an experienced caster, you can make objects quite thin.
- the presence of tool marks makes casting not impossible
- whether modern cast corinthian helmets are impossible to wear or not does not say anything about ancient helmets
- whatever one may say about the difficulty of casting, it makes one wonder why then there are so many other cast objects from antiquity
- If we would have to have gazillions of rests from bronze forms, then where are those for all the montefortinos etc.? Knowing the material of the embedding mass helps a lot here, especially how it behaves when in ground

a Greek armorer would probably find more rationale in grabbing his hammer and a sheet of bronze for this specific project as he would have had more control in shaping and maintaining thickness.

and of course not with wax, which is far more difficult to work, as we all know.

Especially in regard of the huge differences in thickness on most Corinthians, I suggest that they were originally cast, and then the cast object was worked over. Not necessarily the case for all those helmets, but IMO for a large number. The only other possibility to make them properly would be to start from a bronze bar. Unless one folds the metal for the nose over and over and over from quite a large piece of sheet metal.
- miscast helmets: unlike fibulae, helmets are made of quite a lot metal, and the miscasting would have been unlikely to be lost and trodden into the ground. Since even for the Greeks bronze was not cheap, it is quite logical, that we don´t find any miscasts, they would have been molten down again. Or do we have many miscasts of bronze statues of roughly the same weight?
- casting a helmet would hardly take weeks in antiquity, look at the cast montefortinos, once again.

Apart from that I would like to mention that so far I haven´t seen a single reproduction of a corinthian which comes very close to an original.

As discussion goes, I would like to know, how one would make this helmet out of sheet metal:
www.romanarmy.com/rat/viewtopic.php?t=10676&highlight=dendra

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Ahhhhh, I just love these helmets........ it is a conundrum to be sure.....
the back flare is definately hammered...but it is easy to believe it is cast when you look at the edges and nose pieces. So it could be possible it was a combination of the 2....

[caiusbeerquitius]

it was a combination of the 2....

Most likely, yes. The chiselling is something you find on bsically all larger cast objects, so that doesn´t come as a surprise, the skull, the cheek guards and the neck are most certainly hammered after casting. Let alone to make the bronze denser, hence better suited for protection. Nothing new either, though.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

:?: Question...is cast bronze brittle in the same way some cast iron is?
Or, can you work cast iron in the same way as cast bronze........ :?: