Adam Savage Learns Ancient Helmet Hammering Techniques!

[Music] foreign [Music] I think this is a an interesting project here is that a bucket of pitch that is a big old box I never thought I would see such a wonderful large bucket of pitch this is our small bucket of fish okay to explain what this is so uh well so we were talking about our tools right um uh we don't make a lot of uh you know new armor parts very often we're not making a helmet or a breastplate to replace a missing one uh but we do every once in a while get to make a larger piece and this is this is sort of a cool case study where we got to use our historic tools uh so we have here is a a mantra vertino helmet and Etruscan montfortino helmet uh made in the fourth or early third Century BC and the helmet is the original helmet is just the bowl okay but these helmets come with these wild cheek pieces with these sort of embossed sort of Domes and circles around them and a curator felt that you really couldn't appreciate the helmet without these cheek pieces and you had their rivet holes for the cheek pieces visible and we had to I can get to that in a second okay okay so there's a problem where you've got to see the neighbor it kind of it kind of comes out over the nape of the neck here uh that is often misinterpreted as a brow so you'll even go into museums and see these looking like jockey caps that's what I would think I would think that's the front but it's not yeah so to help people realize oh okay this is how it's to be worn we tilted back slightly we've got these cheek pieces uh so we we decided that this is a case in which we were going to make replacements for the cheeks or the cheeks and so we decided to do that in a historically inspired way uh which we can do because of the resources we have here so uh we went to our toothpage two pitch pots uh our larger one actually still has embossing work set into it from one of our predecessor armors and we decided that that is a living piece of history and we're not going to touch it this one had nothing in it so we decided we're going to use this this is a 100 year old pitch pot and been in use in the arms and armor Department ever since its founding can you walk the audience through how this gets used yeah so you've got a you've got a bowl and uh this is a Hand Forged steel bowl uh into which is poured some concrete just to sort of fill out the bottom and onto that is pitch and now what is pitch so pitch is a it's a pine resin and it is a great substance because when you heat it up you can actually sink a material into it and it'll hold on to it real tight uh and it will resist blows if you take a sheet of you know bronze brass copper iron anything like that and you just hit it in the center with a hammer it doesn't really want to form a dome shape it kind of wants to fold on you right so by sinking it into the pitch it gives it the grip and the resistance for you to make these sort of big depressions you're sort of holding on to the whole thing the whole localizing the pressure yeah and resisting the urge to fold and encouraging it to stretch directly under the blow and this and because this is a resin it looks solid but it moves a little bit yeah yeah you can actually see a loose Hammer blow set in there so and you can control how much how resistant it is based on the temperature the warmer it is the easier it'll it'll it'll uh take a blow and the the cooler it is the more it will resist so uh what we did here is we you know cut out a sheet of a sheet of bronze and sort of hammered out these concentric Rings sort of folded that over using our vast collection of chasing tools um we've different shapes or for different parts of these lines and Curves in order to embed this yeah you use uh you sort of start with the interior and knock out your sort of large forms your big domes uh and you're going to want to anneal this uh occasionally too so that you can keep stretching it without with cracking and annealing it is just like holding a blow torch over yeah you just heat it up okay uh and then you can come right back to working uh then you flip it over and on the on the exterior you sharpen up your lines and you can uh planish uh you know smooth out your your crests and your valleys again uh and get a smoother uh surface and then you grind and you polish and get down to the surface you want uh this is sort of in the early stage here where I haven't gotten to the plant shooting and grinding really yet so this is this is this is like a test piece and this isn't I I mean I guess people could end up being confused and think this is some sort of mold for this but this is just the remnants of a set of hammering this is the artifact of the hammering gotcha this is what's left over afterward and then what we end up with fold it over a hinge and with the added of a little uh tab for your chin strap is a monster cheek piece and then that's been uh patinated and some a little bit of in painting in order to blend it in with the surface and you had some example you were following to know your we did that's actually an interesting story because I didn't have any in hand when I started started working on this so I was going from images of ones that we were fairly confident were original and of the correct type we got one in on it so I remade it a very short period both cheek pieces uh just the one sheet piece this is one of the earlier ones that is displayed against the wall so this will actually one day I will finish it and this will become the other cheek piece and it can be reviewed in the round properly oh so this is slightly less corrected this way because this will be against the wall yeah sure you've gotta you gotta make your priorities this is a large restoration right we don't really want to fool anybody uh you know in conservation we have an Ethics where we don't want to alter original material we can avoid it we don't want to fool anyone you want you to know what's there so this is noted on the label that these cheek pieces are restored the cheap pieces are both uh dated so you know when they were made on them on them and most importantly it's not attached to the helmet oh so clever ruse if at any point in the future you wanted to display this as a 100 original material you can there's nothing's damaged nothing's altered I'm imagining you sitting here with this patch and hammering in and maybe something happens that doesn't quite go right but it goes wrong in a way that tells you oh that's why that Mark is in that piece of armor over there I I love getting actually one in hand and looking up close you you suddenly feel better about yourself when you can see that actual professionals having the same problems you are well I remember Terry English when we were making armor in Cornwall was telling me that he doesn't measure the rivet spacing he's like because there's no peace in the Royal collection that they're at all consistent he's like I use calipers but just that yeah yeah I mean they were doing everything by hand and by eye and you know you you get some things that are Wonky where you know uh the comb and the visor slits are slightly off from each other and it's it was just the way things were and adapted it I wrong with that is it have you come across two pieces of armor from the same shop that came from two different Collections and get to see the marks of the same hand oh yeah I mean there are known makers and you get to see their pieces a lot and there's sort of consistencies which is it's just lovely to see you get a sense of the actual yeah I mean that connects you right there to that whole history yeah they're you're talking to them across that oh I mean just even the idea that you guys are using all these old tools to replicate and fix and make these things but that you're also using the old materials and they are still viable and still producing is really thrilling yeah I mean they they knew what they were doing and you know there's no reason not to follow in their footsteps you get to learn a little along the way I mean actually doing things in a historic method you learn when I have replicated stuff by old makers I and I realize I'm walking in those same footsteps it is one of my favorite feelings at the bench because it's like a a conversation through time just yeah to do something different and at work and go oh that's how they did it it's just such a great feeling thank you so much this is amazing thank you for visiting foreign

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 87,447

Keywords: tested, adam savage, tested adam savage, adam savage tested, adam savage armor, adam savage (tv producer), metropolitan museum, metropolitan museum of art, metropolitan museum of art tour, arms and armor sword, arms and armor, MET, knights, real suits of armor, best suits of armor, tested adam savage armor, adam savage knight armor, armor tools, armor conservation, museum armor, the met armor, met arms and armor, adam savage met, adam savage armor museum, helmet, pitch

Id: _TfTlI9KVWY

Length: 8min 13sec (493 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 28 2023