Ravana
Istar
Thanks to you, I do have alot more respect to the old time helmet then I did, at least what the SCA recreates it as. By description I was not impressed, a metal pot with a clump of horse hair to cushion it does not sound very comfortable, nor protective. I guess there is a lot of horse hair stuffed in a small pad in the helmet.
Apart from the modern foam for padding, SCA helmets are pretty much exact duplicates of historical ones. (Well, we use welded grill visors a lot more, since they're a lot easier to breathe in, a bit easier to see out of, and welding's a whole lot easier with electricity. ) The helm is, in fact, the only part of the armor that is required to be made out of metal: at least 16-gauge steel, though most people I know use 14-gauge… which puts the helmets at the same thickness as the bulk of museum collection pieces. Any other piece of rigid protection you're allowed to make out of plastic. Part of the reason is because metal can be dented–whereas plastic doesn't dent: it either transmits the entire force to the wearer… or it breaks. Of course, the metal doesn't usually dent either, so the first result is fairly normal; it's the second we're mostly worried about.
But, no, I wouldn't want to trade in the foam for horsehair stuffing. Even when it's packed in fairly tightly, though (and you'd much rather have it tight than loose: you want head and helm to move together, not have the helm bounced into your head), the padding still takes up a fair amount of the blow… which has already been reduced by having the impact spread out across the whole head, plus having to overcome the inertia of the helm itself. Though an even bigger factor can be make of helm and angle of impact–which is why helms with more rounded profiles came to be favored over time. (In the SCA, we refer to barrel helms as "duke's landing strips." ) If you can get the blade to glance off, it rarely matters how much force is behind it… which is also why I said impact weapons have an advantage: they're much more forgiving (for the wielder) when it comes to angle.
Comfort is another story. While the discomfort of wearing armor is generally overrated, there are very few people I know who don't take their helmets off between fights–even those who do have grillwork faces. Part of that is it's one of the only pieces that can be easily removed and put back on, of course… but you'll notice that football players are the same in this. If they don't expect to go right back onto the field, the hat comes off. Even when you're accustomed to wearing one, having that extra weight on your head is something few people care for; plus, considering the amount of heat your body eliminates through your scalp, taking it off is a good idea even if it were otherwise comfy.
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