Leather Great Helm  SBEG-ARMR-GREATHELM   $84  Expedited Shipping Available! E-mail service@strongblade.com or call 866-7SWORDS In Stock - Ships in 1-3 days    The great helm, also known as the "bucket helm" or "pot helm" is one of the scariest helmets in history. Basically, the helmet is a strong metal cylinder. Visor slits allowed a knight to see his opponents (although he couldn’t see all that well in there), and smaller slits near the center of the helmet give the wearer the nice option of actually breathing (as well as keeping the knight a little cooler. Can you imagine wearing a big metal can on your head in the middle of summer? You’d appreciate those holes too!). These helmets were developed in the late 1100s and were especially liked by Crusading knights (see our Crusdader history for more information about the Crusaders). The helmet gave excellent protection from most weapons and seemed, at the time, to be the perfect complement to full plate armor. There were only two real weak points to the great helm: The eye slits (it was a place where opponent’s could aim their weapons) and the flat top, which just screams "Hit me here with that war hammer!" (warhammers were really, really effective against knights wearing these helmets). Great helms later in history developed a curved top to deflect blows from hammers and maces. They also developed visors which could be opened and closed and "beaks" along the nose and mouth to make breathing easier. Great Helms were particularly popular in tournaments. Knights added crests to the top of the helm, like horses or eagles or fists or gerbils, or anything of particular significance to the their family name.

Although the term rapier has become synonymous with any narrow-bladed sword (particularly those with fancy hilts), the term rapier actually applied to only a select few types of swords. Rapiers were narrow (usually one and a quarter inches wide), quite long, fairly heavy, and usually had only a slight edge on them. The extremely long length of the rapiers made them a bit heavy and cumbersome, not at all the Errol Flynn or Zorro-type small-swords that most people think of.

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