Iron Man Mark 4 Helmet Template Pdf

[Karriem Drewery]

transferthe paper template marks onto, in my case, an old galvanized sign and start cutting! I left the tape on the cover to protect the cool retro aqua paint and to help me re-position the newly cut-up pieces. I then punched and drilled the galvanized sheet and transferred the hole marks and drilled the cover. As you can see I use sheet metal screws but will probablly replace them...to funky lookin'. I do like the old original iron man mask/costum...lots of rivets...when I'm finished this will be a cross between the old and the cool, sleek. new movie version helmet...stay tuned

The ship creaks gently as it slips across the tops of the waves, gliding, nearly noiselessly, through the fog. You pull at the oars next to Leif, the bearded giant who rows beside you. The journey has been long as weeks have passed on this tiny boat over the open sea and you twitch in anticipation of landfall and your first battle alongside all of the seasoned warriors who grunt and strain at the oars with you. The sounds of weapons being drawn, checked, sharpened, resheathed, reverberate all around you. Suddenly, from somewhere ahead in the mist comes a shout and a long blast on a horn. You leap up from your seat alongside all of your fellow warriors and adjust your chain mail one more time, then pull your helmet down onto your head, thanking the gods for the smith that made it. You take up your shield, draw your sword, and shout as one with your comrades: "Onward to glory! On to Valhalla!"

It seems like Vikings have been having a bit of a renaissance lately. Fortunately, we don't have to worry about roaming bands of bearded men armed to the teeth raiding our coastal cities any more, but Vikings have been popping up all over the place in popular culture thanks to TV shows, movies, video games, and comic books. Contrary to popular belief, vikings never wore horned helmets (you can blame 19th century German opera and, subsequently, Bugs Bunny for that one), but they did wear some striking helmets that were similar to the one I am going to show you how to build here. This is not necessarily a one to one historical build, but it is Viking inspired and it fits fairly well into historical dress.

Before we get started, I would like to issue a small disclaimer: this project is hard to make. I'm no armorer, but I do blacksmith full time and metal is no real mystery to me, but this project was difficult. Really difficult. The kind of difficult where you throw the thing down at the end of the day and wonder why you ever thought this was a good idea. There were a lot of tedious aspects to this build and it often felt like the metal had a mind of its own as I tried to work it into the shape I wanted.

That said, this project is also doable and having done it, I feel like I've gained a new appreciation for the armorer's art and even picked up some new knowledge and skills along the way. Hopefully seeing what I've done will help you to avoid some of the pitfalls that I stepped in and give you the inspiration to make one of your own.

There are a lot of materials and tools involved in this build. The materials are all pretty common and readily accessible at your local hardware store. The tools are a bit more specialty and may be harder to come by so I will include the tools I used below along with some possible substitutes.

Over the course of this project, you will be working with copper and steel, both of which have the potential to form sharp edges that can cut you. You will also be using some sharp tools and some dangerous tools that have the potential to cut you and throw metal splinters that could lodge in your skin, eyes, or lungs. I, personally, have a bad habit of not wearing my protective gear and it has come back to bite me more than once. After a metal splinter in my eye, I've been better about wearing my glasses, but I wound up with no fewer than five cuts on my hands as a result of not wearing my gloves during this project. Learn from my mistakes. Wear your protective gear. Glasses and gloves at all times and a mask or respirator when cutting and grinding.

You also need to establish how deep the helmet will be and, subsequently, how far down it will sit on your head. To do this, I measured with the string, over the top of my head from temple to temple. I thought this would give me a nice depth. Last but not least, I measured for the other arch from the middle of my forehead to the back of my head.

Using your head measurements, mark out some bands on your cardboard. I made my bands roughly an inch wide, but the size isn't integral at this point. You should wind up with three bands, one long, one medium, and one short or, in my case, four bands with two taped together for the long one.

Once you have the bands marked, use a pair of scissors to cut them out, then use some tape to attach them together. By the time you're done, you should have a rough template for your helmet with a band that fits comfortably around your head and two arches that go up and over your head from front to back and from left to right. You should have about half an inch to an inch of extra space all around.

This step may seem kind of goofy, but it's important for making sure that your final product will actually fit your head. Unless you're incredibly confident in your ability to assess size, it's better to do this and discover that something is off now rather than later.

For starters, we need to flatten the copper pipe. Use your ball peen hammer and your anvil to flatten out the pipe so that it becomes one long, flat band of metal. Once you've gotten your copper flattened out, use the measurements from your template to cut the bands to length.

After cutting, you're ready to bend. I used a bending jig because I had it, but you can bend the metal by hammering it into shape, bending it little by little in a vice, or even by hand. Copper is pretty soft so it's relatively easy to form into the semicircular shapes that you need. Note that the head band is more of an oval shape than a circular one as heads tend to be more ovular than circular.

Use some clamps to hold the bands together as a rough mock up and make sure that all the pieces will fit together roughly the way you want. At this point in the project, I was still using wood clamps, but the welding clamps would work here as well.

To do this, we need to make another template. Using the cardboard template you just made along with your copper arches, take some measurements and determine your dimensions. I laid my template over some other cardboard and traced out the rough shape. I also measured my mocked up copper band and arches to make sure that the size of my tracing wasn't way off. Once I was close, I added about an inch of space around the triangle to make sure it would fit under the band. I also rounded out the corners and sides to make sure that there would be enough material to catch the bands after dishing and to make them a little less sharp and friendlier to work with.

Cut out the cardboard plate template and check it against your cardboard band template and your copper bands. It won't fit perfectly because it isn't possible to dish cardboard, but you should be able to tell if the basic shape will fit or not.

This is one of the more challenging aspects of this project, especially if you don't have a lot of experience with metal work, but it can be done with a little patience, potentially some practice, and, hopefully, a minimum amount of frustration.

Use your forge or torch to heat the metal plates. I recommend doing this one plate at a time to allow yourself to concentrate. When the steel reaches a bright red or orange heat, take it out and hammer it into the swage block. Your goal is to make a nice gradual dish shape that will fit inside the copper bands. As you hammer the steel into the depression on the block, the edges will want to deform and buckle, so it's helpful to periodically move to the anvil to hammer the deformities back out. Make sure to kind of roll the piece upward as you hammer so that you aren't flattening your nice dishing work.

When you get close to the shape you want, lay the piece over the copper frame to make sure it will actually fit. It won't be exact, but doing this will help you to get close. You may even want to hammer the steel plate directly on to the copper frame to get it to the right shape. By the time you're done with all four plates, you want them to be roughly the same size and shape, and you want them all to have a similar contour. There's some room for error, but you want them to be close.

After the forging is done. It's time to trim off the excess from the plates. To do this, I laid all four of the plates together and clamped them into the rough shape of a helmet and then marked lines straight over the top from front to back and left to right. Then I cut each of the plates so that they would butt against one another rather than overlapping. Some of my plates also sat a little lower than the others, so I marked and trimmed them as well. I also recommend marking the plates that were trimmed together to make sure they stay beside one another. I did this on the front and back pairs of plates by marking '1' and '2' with arrows pointing toward the cut and on the left and right pairs of plates by making a line with some shapes at the end. This may seem arbitrary or redundant, but knowing which plates match with which is important for making a helmet that is symmetrical.

Make sure that your pieces all fit together and make sure that all the edges of your plates will fit underneath the copper bands. If the pieces don't match up, trim them some more until they do. If they don't fit under the copper bands, or if the trimming made them too small to fit on your head, it's time to go cut and forge some more.

It is very important to make sure that the top four holes line up on both of your arches. The rest of the holes are independent of one another, but these four must match up. Line up your two bands, mark one of them and drill it, then line up again and use the holes you just made to mark the holes in the other band. Make sure everything is staying straight and even, or you will wind up with a lopsided helmet when you're done.

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