A. Lerios Marine, Nicholas Toth, Master Helmet Maker: The Process

Test fitting brail to breastplate.

Around 140 hours. I work in the same shop and use the same tools as my grandfather. I start with the brass pieces on a lathe. The machining is very important, and I enjoy putting the parts together.

I use shears to cut the shoulder plate from a sheet of thin copper. Then the copper goes in a cast-iron form hand-crafted by my grandfather in the early 1900s, and I pound it smooth with my wooden mallet and peg. The process takes an hour and a half. But it took years to build up my stamina. The first time I did it I thought my arm was going to fall off.

The helmet, or kettle, as it is sometimes called, is also made of copper and is spun on a lathe to force it around my grandfather's pattern. then I cut four holes in the helmet - front, top and both sides. There's also a smaller hole in the back for air to enter. On the right side of the helmet is another air hole used as an outlet valve. Air is fed into the helmet continuously for breathing. The diver taps the outlet valve to allow excess air to escape. The four large openings are for the diver to see, and we use 1/4 inch plate glass. I solder fittings; then the neck ring and portholes get fitted with leather seals to make them watertight. I fabricate all of the other parts - from the precision air valves down to the smallest wing nut.

The last piece is a brass plate that says: "Made by A. Lerios Marine, Est. 1913."

The result is an expertly crafted helmet that should survive 30 or 40 years of daily use. They weigh around 34 pounds. In the last 20 years I've made about four dozen.

Forming breastplate on Tony's cast iron mandrel.