Viking Longboat and Viking Helmet Tutorials

Okay more work on the longboat and the making of a Viking Helmet too.

Okay so I've gesso'd the hull shapes .....

Then I painted them with the Dulux base paint, which once dried,  I then painted with its wood effect top coat.

So here are the two hulls, now painted, dried and one with the mast in position.
The circles are simply pre cut card circles of cardboard, also similarly gesso'd and painted ( from Scrapstore ) and they will represent the shields that were strapped onto the sides of the hull.

Above shows the shields in position, simply held in place with those metal, whatever they are called push through and bend back thingies lol
They have sharp ends to them so in this instance I have used balsa wood inserts glued in place to cover them.
These inserts will also be painted to represent the seats the Viking oarsmen sat on when rowing.
Obviously there would have been many, many shields and seats on a full sized boat, but the object here is for a blind child to be able to feel the shape and layout of what a longboat would have been like. 
So it doesn't need to be an exact replica.

The next stage is to rig up a mast.................so come back later for that stage!

Now I also needed another Viking Helmet, one that the kids could try on so here's a bit of a how-to, too! 
This is what I started with! 
A vegetable strainer........99p in B&M Stores lol

Next I covered the whole thing in tin foil...

then in strips of masking tape on this one....

now often I gesso over this but I didn't today....

I stuck grey gaffa tape on the inside here...........
and then used an old enamel grey paint to paint the whole thing since I couldn't find my silver metal effect paint.

Next I cut a flap of leather and drilling holes through the 'bowl', used those natty metal gadgets again, to attach the flap to the helmet.

so okay, once again sharp pointy bits for tender heads! 
So I used the grey gaffa tape again to seal all round the inside covering all the sharp ends....but forgot to take a picture sorry!

This shows you a strip of card round the front head, to anchor the nose guard in place.
I drilled a few more holes in the strip to clamp the nose guard firmly into position.
But again for some daft reason I haven't taken a photo of that!
I will take one tomorrow though, so you can clearly see that by placing more pins on the narrow strip, the nose guard is thoroughly clamped in place.
The strip and nose guard are simply mount board, covered in masking tape and painted too. 
The long strip can be eased into roundness using scissors run along its length, to bend it slightly.

et voila....