Recently I've gotten interested in medieval armor and even ordered some cheap replica armor for display. But there's one little piece that's missing from those replicas called a besagew that I want to make. They're about 11 inches in diameter and are basically a round, flower-petal shaped protective plate for the armpit.



I've never worked with metal aside fr before but I have already managed to cut out the basic shape with 16 gauge sheet metal and using a bending brake to make out the individual petal shapes. But hammering out the curvature on the petal shapes properly like that is where I get completely lost. Any advice?

YouTube Is your friend.



There are plenty of others with details on just about every piece.

and how to make it

I won't claim to know what I'm talking about, but if it were me I'd probably try getting a piece of hardwood, like an un-split oak firewood chunk, and chiseling/whittling/carving the concave profile of one of the petals into the end grain.  Use that as a form, hammering the steel sections into it and rotating it as you go.  Actually rather than just rotating I'd probably work opposite sections in sequence, like tightening lug nuts on a car, to more evenly distribute stretching and distortion.

English wheel perhaps?  

I was thinking more planishing hammer.