My panoply (so far)

[PygmyHippo]

is a way to pad a helmet so it doesn’t suck to wear for more than 20 minutes

What a gorgeous set of kit! Truly lovely. I love the hair engraved on the top of your helmet, and the wooden tie-downs on your spolas looks great.

In regards to padding a helmet, you might model after motorcycle or bicycle helmets. Rather than a solid or continuous set of padding all around the inside, they instead use a series of separate pads. That allows the air to circulate inside the helmet between the pads.

You could fold wads of heavy wool cloth (from a blanket) and sew them into pads, then glue into place. You could probably make wads from sheep hide or shearing, or pack wool felt into lumps and stuff them into little sewn linen pillows. And if you still wanted a continuous liner for looks, you could then sew a linen one to cover it all up. No matter what you do it'll all get sweaty anyway, but separate pads is they way I did the cheeks, brow and rear neck of my helmet. The dome has a cross shaped pad. Apart from a little circulation, the main reason was so that I could adjust the pads to test the best fit. You could even cut out a hole in the center of the top pad so it's more of a donut shape sitting on the crown of your head. The weight of the helmet is born on the top of the head, so the other pads on the cheek and rear are just to stabilize it so it doesn't wobble when moving. I could trim down the pads to allow more air circulation, but at the end of the day, I still get pretty overheated.
   
Marcus