Rohan Royal Guard Helmet from lotr

[thirteenpaces]

Hello! My first ever post! I’ve been working on a variety of Rohan themed props over the last year, based on the props made by Weta Workshop for the Lord of the Rings trilogy by Peter Jackson. My winter project has been a Rohan Royal Guard helmet.

I’ve wanted one of these helmets ever since I saw the films. They don’t seem to be commercially available apart from some EVA foam replicas. I’ve never used EVA foam, and didn’t want to spend much. Plus I wanted it to have some heft. But I do have plenty of leather. So I made it mostly of that.

I’ve pretty much finished the helmet. I usually post my project progress to my Instagram stories, but thought I’d add this here if of interest! Here is the helmet currently…

Anyway, hope you enjoy seeing how I got to this point! Is by no means perfect, but overall I’m really pleased with it!

 

[Madmanad]

That’s awesome man! Love the movies and this looks pretty accurate. Keep up the good work!

 

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So firstly I gathered a load of reference pictures off the internet. Here are the main images I used...

 

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So firstly, without any real plan I used a few bits of scrap veg tan leather (around 2mm thick) to mock up this structure. I punched holes and used brass split rivets to hold it all together. The rivets were not split at this stage though. On the headband I was going to have the split at the back, but I realised the faceplate would should sit at the level of the headband, so a section would have to be taken out at the front anyway.

Faceplate Shape Development - I made a couple attempts making a pattern to try and get it as close to the screen used helmet as possible.

At this point I did the initial faceplate as two separate pieces. The centre line of the nasal should be a lot more defined that this, but wasn't sure how to tackle.

I then moved on to the side bands, firstly making a template, then cutting out the leather, then test fitting on my mocked up structure.

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I then proceeded to split the rivets so they were permanently attached. I also glued around the rivet with contact adhesive.

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[thirteenpaces]

That’s awesome man! Love the movies and this looks pretty accurate. Keep up the good work!

Thanks man!

 

[thirteenpaces]

After everything was riveted and glued, I glued the faceplate in place.

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Filling Rear sections
Then it was time to fill in the back sections....first I drew inside the negative space to create a rough template. I then placed this inside the helmet to see how it generally fit. I altered/made new this template a couple times until I was happy. I then cut it out in leather. Same leather as everything else. I wet moulded these to give them a little more of preset rounded shape. To do this, I submerged them in hot water (not boiling) then generally rounded them with my hands. Left overnight, they dried with this slight rounding.

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After they have dried, I set about installing them. Even with all the patterning, I still made alterations to the cut out pieces. Once happy, I glued them in place with contact ahedive. I use timebond by Evo-Stick as you can see in the pictures.

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After doing the one side, I glued in the other side. Then did a similar process for the side panels. It was at this point I noticed the helmet was suddenly on the small side. By adding in those back panels, I blocked off a lot of space for my head to fit through. I think this is made worse by the strap at the back. I think that should be longer, and therefore a more arched shape.

I decided I was not going to redo the entire back section I had just spent an age working on, and instead alter the front. As the faceplate design clearly wasn't working either. Its flat shape was now pressing on my nose, and clearly needed to be more 3d. So I ripped out the faceplate. The glue is good, but thankfully it can come apart with force.

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[thirteenpaces]

So! I cut out a new faceplate (I don't know if thats the correct term, but its what I'm going with) and made it about 1.5" wider. Particularly at the nose. The other one didn't really account for the shape of the nose. So this one is designed with wrapping around it in mind. I then wet moulded this. Again, submerging in hot water. I have a little anvil, so I took it to this and placed the ridge of the nose on the anvil edge. I then hammered this edge to create a little ridge. I then flipped the piece round and hammered the other side of the ridge. I had drawn a line for the ridge of the nose in pen beforehand for a clear indication of where it was (ignore all the other messy lines). I then pressed the piece into my face to give it the overall shaping needed, and let it dry overnight. This worked perfectly.

I then glued the new faceplate in place. Instead of putting it totally vertical, I placed it at a slight angle, to match the shape of my face.

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Then I patterned and glued in place the cheek guards. I slotted it in between the headband and the side panel. I then backed this with another layer, to make it double as thick. I had the smooth side out on the backing. The backing wasn't glued in between, but on the inside instead.

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[Grievous]

That is a beautiful helmet! Well done - thanks for sharing the building process!

 

[thirteenpaces]

Next I cut out the front section. Unlike the back, this is all one piece with no central divider. So I knew that getting a nice rounded shape was going to be even more difficult. Obviously in metal this is possible, but leather not so much. I think the only reasonable way to do this is to add darts. This seems to be a common method with EVA foam armour builders. However, as impatient as I am, I didn't want to take a age figuring that out. Plus doing it in leather would be pretty difficult compared to foam. So I just went ahead and followed the same process as I did for the back/side sections, until I got this....

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Now everything was in place, the helmet was far too small for me. I tried soaking it, and wet moulding it to my head, but nothing budged significantly. In fact, a seam burst at the back which I had to re-glue. So I accepted that this would be prototype helmet, to test everything before doing my own. I tried it on my mum, and low and behold, it fit her pretty well!

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In trying it on her, and taking these photos, I couldn't help seeing the issues. It looked okay from the front, but from the side the front was far too flat.

Putting that aside for a moment, I turned to some details. You can see in the previous test fit pics, I added an upper section to the 'brow' of the faceplate. This added the layering I attempted in the first try. I then used the templates from before, and some thin (1mm) leather to cut out and glue on some edging detail clearly present on the screen used helmets...

 

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Re-shaping the front

I then turned my attention back to the dome (or not dome as the case may be) section on the front. After some deliberating I decided something had to be done. I had the idea of building up the dome with material, then smoothing it all out with some sort of filler. I tried leather at first, but ultimately used cork sheet (2mm) I've had for years.

A pretty simple task of patterning and cutting out cork, then gluing all the pieces. I then cut/sanded the layers edges to make then as smooth as possible. Doesn't sand very well but best I could. Then I used wood filler over the entire thing to smooth it all out. By adding some water it was easy to smooth with my finger.

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Wet Carving Details

I then set about adding some details to the leather to hopefully make it look like it was either cast or engraved that way. First I did the grooves on the brow. I got some hot water into a jug and used a paint brush to brush on the water onto the brow. I then used a blunt awl to carve in the lines. I then did a similar process for other little bits of detail. I just drew them on before hand. There was a little bit of guess work with the designs, but so long as it looks relatively right, I'm not too bothered.

I'm not sure if it really needs the leather to be wet. I actually got frustrated with the complicated designs and gave up on them. But once I saw how cool they looked once painted, I went back to them. Seemed to work even when dry/painted a little. I think it I had the right tools and know-how this could be really good. But I was happy with what I managed to do. The issue is doing curves. Straight lines isn't too difficult.

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[thirteenpaces]

Painting

The helmet was pretty simple to paint. It doesn't have a complicated paint scheme. I thought about leather dyeing it all black first, as I wasn't sure how paint would react to being on leather. But tbh I couldn't be bothered wasting the leather dye. Prior to painting though, I should say, I sanded the wood filler smooth, then added a couple coats of PVA glue. This went rock hard and I couldn't believe how well it turned out. I didn't expect the wood filler to perform so well.

So my first step was to paint everything black. I did this with a brush with everyday standard matt black household paint. Just because I have a load and its cheap. If I had a black spray can I would have used that. And if I were to do it again I would use a spray can. Because the brush left brush strokes. I knew it would but I did it anyway out of impatience! I didn't photograph this all black stage.

Next I sprayed all the silver areas with silver spray paint (which I thankfully had!). I used Plasti-kote metallic silver. I then repainted all the brass/copper bits with black.

Engraving
I then drew on the engraved design with a pencil and then simply used an awl to scratch away the surface. This removed the silver paint layer and revealed the black underneath and worked surprisingly well.

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Painting continued

I then gave all the brass/copper parts two coats. I used just what I had from other projects. So I used fabric paint. Specifically, Tulip brand Gold & Pearl metallic paints. Once this was done, all the basic painting was complete.

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Weathering

I then proceeded to weather the entire thing with watered down black paint.

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The Crest

I then moved onto the helmets crest. This looked to be made of wood and horsehair. But firstly, I turned to patterning. I laid the helmet down on some paper, and drew along the back to get the general shape of the arch at the back. I then drew the crest from that as I felt it should look. Once cut out I could see how it looked. I altered this a couple times until happy.

I then cut this shape out of some 3/4" MDF I had with a jigsaw. Having done so, I decided this was too chunky looking. The screen used ones look pretty narrow actually. I found a bit of scrape fence (taken out by Storm Arwen funnily enough) that was around 1/2" thick. and cut it out of that.

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Once this new piece was cut out, and place it on the helmet and took a picture. When compared to reference material, I realised it still wasn't quite the right shape, and so redid it. This was a blessing in disguise as will come apparent later.

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[thirteenpaces]

The Horsehair

So the next step was to add the horsehair plume. Fortunately, I had a bunch of real horsehair a friend gave me years ago. I finally have a use for it! The first thing to do was to wash it and untangle...which took about 2 hours of tedious labour. I lost a lot of the hair at this stage just from untangling it.

Plait
After that, I separated it, and used a bunch to make a plait/braid. To do this I used some linen thread to tie the top. Then I braided it into a plait to the length I wanted (length of the back of the crest basically) and then tied the bottom of it with linen thread. A fiddly process, but got there in the end. The plait has been place on here just to see how it would look.

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Mane
Going by the reference material, underneath the plait there is much more hair pretty much resembling a horses mane. This looks to seamlessly come out of the crest. Fortunately, When I remake the crest it ended up a bit wider and so took up more of the fence slat. This kind of fencing has a kind of male & female edge, and slots together like so. The crest happened to end up with the groove edge on its back and so with a perfect groove to slot the hair into.

After some deliberation, I decided to machine sew the hair to some sort of fabric strip. I went with some 10mm wide black cotton herringbone tape, as its what I had to hand. In the end I sandwiched the hair between two layers of this. This method did, and did not work. The idea did work, but not the execution. It was not even and so very patchy in places. Also the sewing did not keep the hair fixed. the hair could pretty much just slide out. I think sewing and then glueing it would be better.

However, the principal did work well. The cotton tape glued easily into the slot and looked perfect in that sense. Only it looked patchy and the hair pulled out too easily. At this point, I was think this would have been easier with synthetic hair. After attaching it to the tape, it reminded me of what I thought hair extensions looked like. So I probably could buy some cheap hair extensions and achieve the same thing. But I really wanted to do this with real horse hair.

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So to try and fixed the issues, I took to gluing in bundles of hair to try and thicken up the thin spots. And this worked great. At first I tied one of these bundles with thread and got the contact adhesive over it, but after that taking a while, I took to just whacking the glue over the hair as it was and glueing direct on. You can see in the next two pictures the improvment...

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Fixing in Place the braid.

The next thing to do was to permanently attach the braid. I want this to also seamlessly issue out of the crest, so decided to drill a hold going diagonally into it for the braid to slot into. Pretty simple job, I think it was a 7mm hole drilled. I then simply glued the end of the braid in place to hide the thread wrapping. I also glued the first few inches on the braid behind the hole down so as it sat flat on the crest.

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[kevin926]

Well done and great build log.

Thank you for sharing

 

[thirteenpaces]

Painting the Crest

Next was painting the crest. First I painted the whole thing black. Then I realised I didn't have any brown paint. I wanted it done that day so I mixed a few colours I had (red, yellow, blue & orange) and low and behold, I managed to get the brown! Obviously that step isn't necessary normally!

Then I freehand design on in pencil. I actually initially planned to add this design on as cut out thin leather to add a 'raised' quality to it. But decided this was too fiddly and decided to just paint it, which I'm glad I did. Then it was just a case of painting the gold. I used the same gold fabric paint from before. Here you can see the first layer. A bit messy but gets the general outline done.

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Then I sharpened everything up. First by refining the edges with the brown, then another coat of gold. Continue this until happy.

 

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Attaching the Crest

Then I set about attching the crest. First I glued it on with my trusty contact adhesive. I left it overnight to be fully set. The next morning I used a power drill to drill in screws from the inside. It was a little tricky get them started, but once going screwed in fine. It helps having someone hold the helmet whilst you do this, as you're balancing the helmet upside down on the crest.

At this point I put wood filler into the seam between the helmet and the crest to remove any gap. I should say, the crest wasn't perfectly flush with the helmet, but I don't think 'perfect' was necessary. I filled in some gaps by gluing in thin leather when I glued the crest on (not pictured), though to be honest, with the screws its solid enough. So long as the gaps aren't so big the wood filler can't handle.

I lightly sanded this, and added a coat of PVA glue to seal.

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[thirteenpaces]

Braid Brass keeper

So the reference material to the helmets used in the film indicate that the braid has a brass loop at the bottom of the plait. At the moment, mine just has some thread tied around it to stop it from unfurling. I think this is a nice detail and fortunately I have some scraps of 1mm sheet brass from another project.

Firstly I cut out the sheet brass with some tin snips. Whatever I cut it out to turned out to be pretty much perfect. I think it was roughly 1.5"x1/2". I then filed the edges a little and clipped off the corners. Then I used two pairs of pliers to roughly bend it. After that I took it to my anvil and used the pliers to hold it and a small hammer to further bend it in on itself.

I then decided to roughly glue it to the hair so it could not later slide off. Before doing so I wrapped thread around the already threaded end of plait and the rest of the hair coming from the crests groove. There is a issue with this, but I'll explain that in the pieces summary post.

Once glued, I fully closed it up with the hammer and anvil, making it overlap.

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I then set about gluing this brass keeper to the bottom of the crest. As well as that, I also glued the hair down the few inches above it. My contact adhesive didn't work so well with the brass as it has with the rest of the project. It never does with metal. But it did work. I just had to turn the helmet upside down so the weight of the helmet was on it (leaning on something) and left it overnight. But morning it was solid enough. I'm sure there are other ways to do this but it worked.

Another issue was the thread wrap was slightly visible out of the bottom of the keeper. I couldn't really adjust this, so ended up painting it black which made it hardly noticeable.

There is a issue with glueing this down authenticity wise, but again I'll discuss that in the summary.

The final step was to repaint the crest/hemet where the wood filler seam was. A bit annoying having to redo these bits. First I painted it all black where the white was, then just basically redid it. I just silver metallic fabric paint where the sprayed silver was. Not exactly the same, but blended in okay with all the weathering.

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[thirteenpaces]

Its Complete!!!....for now....

So the helmet is done. For the moment. The main thing thats missing is an maille (chainmail) aventail. In laymans terms, should have a chainmail piece that is attached to the back of the helmet and covers the back of the neck. This isn't crucial, as it works as is, and looks pretty cool as is in my opinion. Also I want to figure out the best way to do this.

Anyway, here are some pictures of it in its current form...

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Issues

So there are a couple of issues I'd like to point out at this point. Mainly that it doesn't fit me! But as mentioned previously, I've accepted that this is a prototype. Plus it does fit a smaller head size, so not a complete waste. So I'm going to have to make another and think of ways to fix the size issue.

The other deliberation is the brass keeper. Since doing it, I've noticed that it is slightly different on the screen used helmets. The keeper appears to only wrap around the braid and not the other hair. Having the hair all tied back looks neat, but doesn't have the 'horses mane' effect it originally had. The original helmets hair clearly was a lot looser, and in fact cover most of the crest. Also having watched the films again over christmas, I noticed in one scene (the charge at Pelenor Fields), one rider rides off and the braid/brass keeper clearly lifts off as he rides. As though its not attached down.

Anyway, that aside I'm very happy with it, and finally have one! Hope you've enjoyed this build log so far. I have make various other Rohan bits, including shields, banners and the main flag of rohan, so perhaps I will do posts on them also. I also plan on continuing with this Royal Guard costume, and hope to make the full costume, including horse parts.