don't collect us and may not be suitable for children under 13 years of age. Viewer discretion is advised. Hey, what's going on guys? Picture prime here once again with another episode of the sit rep. And thank you so much for spending your Friday night with us. Me and my special guest, Edutabe, two old dudes who have nothing better to do the internet and while we were waiting to go live, we're both sitting here yawning and oh, we're so old. This was a I could not wait for today. I was so ready for the weekend, long day at work. And he says he has to get to work in the morning. So it is what it is. Inutabi, how are you doing tonight? I'm doing pretty good for somebody's got to get up in like five hours. So how many in an hour? Five. Oh, and here here I am. Hey, won't do my show at 10. But no, I don't sleep much. I'm like three, four hours a night. I'm good. All right. Hey, chat. Others fire talks in there. Hell, yeah. Time for a toy. Hacks break. My eyes are bleeding. Yeah, he got a huge order in today. One of them I know was the Ark. I got the Ark a month ago and I'm still working on that now. I am still working on that. I wanted the core class sound wave because of your video. I didn't even realize they did sound wave and I watched your video on core class. I was like, damn, that looks great. So I had an order that I still got their Netflix sound wave set to apply.  So then reviewing a new figure, then a new toy hacks comes up and it's just constant coming in and I was joking with when I wasn't really joking, I was talking on my first live show at the end of November, how I didn't really have anything to review. It was probably going to be mostly toy hacks. And then I found this guy. Well, him, that's the wrong one. That he's somewhere. I got art fire. Oh, was a Cyber Monday deal at GameStop for twenty seven bucks. Couldn't pass that one up. Got my little show. This one got the transmutate to review. Then I finally got. I forgot to order this guy. Dracula came in. Then I got, of course, Amazon surprised all of us with releasing these two already. I wish I pre-ordered those. You didn't get these. I didn't pre-order and I'm going to get the jackpot. And then was it Puffer and Road Ranger? Puffer Puffer and Road Ranger. Yeah, Puffer Puffer. And then this thing and all my Jesus. Oh, my Jesus, I love this. This thing. I mean, I'm six foot forward and this thing is just awesome. What's crazy. It's got a almost realistic looking bipod on it. Oh, yeah. And it locks in. You have to push little buttons on the side to get it to move in. Yeah. So I've treated this thing like kid gloves because I'm really afraid to break it. The plastic's not bad at all. Of course, I'll go over more of that in a review. But I know Kato had issues with his and that's why I was so careful. It probably took me 40 minutes to transform it because I'm just being as dainty as possible. You want to put your eye out? Well, it's funny. Chauncey is all yesterday I almost did mine would not fire straight out of the box.  Nothing would happen. So I'm looking at over and over again. And then yesterday or was yesterday day before we're watching Kato's video. I realized it wasn't the trigger that fires the projectile. When you transform it, you fold the trigger down and then there's this bar that you push up into the trigger well. When you pull the trigger, it pushes against the bar. And so what was going on with mine, it would push against the bar, but with not enough force to activate the catch to fire the projectile. So I had to, I found a piece of plastic matched it up, color matched it to the black bar, glued it on, gave it about that much more thickness. Pull that trigger now fires every time. That's pretty cool. A little bit of modifications, but what's cool, that little bar folds up into his back. Well, one, it folds into the gun. So let me, where's the trigger? Here's the trigger. So the bar folds up in here where you can't see it anyway. So you can't see my glued on plastic. And that's actually the back of the robot. So the bar hides in behind these things anyway. So you're never going to see my little mod. Well, let's see it's five minutes of us rambling. Let's go ahead and get to the sit rep. I know you got five hours of work and I'm going to her five hours still work.  So this is sit rep part two. The last time I talked to Enu Tabi was I think the very first time I ever talked to Enu Tabi was in April of 2019. Looking back, I interviewed all you guys around the same time. Kato was in April, Larkin was in April, or maybe Kato was in March. It was funny enough Larkin was April 1st of 2019. And you were April 8th. Okay. So that long. So we kind of all, I got all the rejecticons before they were the rejecticons. Wow. And I think how it worked was as I talked to each one of you guys, you said, Well, hey, after me, why don't you contact Larkin, why don't you contact Enu Tabi?  Yeah, that's way to use the word. So how this is, this is kind of a follow up to our first sit rep.  And we'll kind of see where you are as a collector now, where you are as a YouTuber or an influencer as they call us anymore. So starting off with question number one, what was one of your collecting goals for 2021? And have you achieved it yet? Yeah, I was, I wanted to get double evil and power baser in this year. And I picked them up within like a week of each other. And how do you like that double evil? It's, I got to get it out of the box. It's sitting back there. Oh, never mind. What's wrong? I'm trying to, I'm trying to redo my space. I'm going to actually all white shelves instead of black and change the lighting. So I want to do something different where I'm just got like the master piece and the Japanese stuff on the shelves and put the main line in a different area. So yeah, I'm just, plus I don't have a lot of time like between work and family and all that stuff. It's hard to, it's hard enough to do a review, much less lay stuff out. Oh, especially now during the holidays. And I want to apologize to everybody. I didn't realize I only got two reviews out this month. I am so behind, but it's like every night, every night it's something else. You're, you're decorating the house. You've got, you've got people coming over. There's Christmas parades going on. There's this party. There's that party.  All right. Well, question number two, has there been any figures that weren't on your radar to pick up at all until someone else in the community reviewed them? Um, and probably so off the top of my head. I picked up that purple potato, which was the shockwave. Yeah. It's transformations garbage, but the figure looks pretty cool. I can't remember who I got it from pop the trunk, but I don't remember who the Luxe. Maybe it was the Luxe that had it first. The Luxe gets everything. Yeah. He didn't get stuff that hadn't been invented yet. Yeah. Yeah. And then I got the, uh, the Planet X, uh, Grimlock. I was planning on getting that, but I think, uh, Kato got it. And then some other people got it and it's just pushed me over to the edge to go ahead and get it. So. Now do you get one of those big Viking bots that Kato got from TF con? No, I didn't get in on the, uh, Archcore stuff. Archcore. I never can remember that stuff. It's, it's, it's hard enough. I'm collecting probably a little bit too much stuff anyway. I'm like GI Joe and then still doing some Star Wars stuff. And then Motu and then Transformers.  Yeah. So I'm with the origins line and it's just, you can't find anything anymore. And of course with me, fortunately, I don't review those. That's just for me to collect. Yes. So if I pre-order something, it's not going to be out for a couple of months. Oh, well, when I get it, I get it. I get it. I just open up, throw it on shelf. Yeah. I started on origins and then I was like, it's going to be, I know what it's going to be. It's going to be me almost buying every single one of them and that's not good. So I need to get out of that. There's a couple I didn't really want, but then they went on sale and I'm like, Oh, what the hell? Yeah. Yeah. And it's, you know, with the Transformers, it's funny. You get all those extra pieces and parts. You're sitting there. You're fooling with them and adding them and changing their looks. I'll admit with these masters, the universe figures, they get all those extra heads and accessories and hands. As soon as I open the package, I take all that stuff, throw it in the bag, you know, just put them right up on the shelf. I got a Tupperware container on the shelf full of like he-man heads and swords and extra arms and all kinds of stuff. I got my baggie of he-man. Yeah. And then my baggie of blast effects. Yeah. Got the bags, man. Somebody should have just sold those blast effects in like packages. Well, remember back in the 80s, those were available. Well, I know they were available for G.I. Joe. G.I. Joe had weapon packs. Oh yeah. I used to buy them. And I think blast effects. What a sold. I can see them in a little blister package shop, you know. Yeah. Hanging on the shelf to get about five of them for 10 bucks. People pay for that. Oh yeah. All right. We're moving on. Number three, what is your favorite figure of 2021? I had so far at the end, but 2021's over. What's your favorite figure so far this year? Oh, man. You know what? What's your favorite figure of 2021? God knows. I really like Scorponaut. I like Scorponaut. That's a great one. I loved that one. I think he was my tail end purchase of last year because after buying Scorponaut, I hunted down an Omega Supreme. And Omega Supreme was my first Titan of 2021. I passed up on him because I was never that big of a Mega Supreme fan. Titan's return version was great, except for the track that was like that small. Yeah. I'm just the only one I'm missing is Metraplex. I hope they'll re-release him or do something different. You know, with them doing slammer and they did six guns. It's almost like they're hinting. Well, look at all the ones they have re-released so far, except for the ones people really want, like the cone heads. Yeah. And see, right behind you, Fort Max, that's the only one I don't have. Because when he first came out, I thought he's too much like Metraplex. And, you know, I didn't want to pay $150 for another Metraplex at the time. Yeah. That thing has got all the upgrades, all the Toyhacks. Toyhacks set a label and that's 350 stickers. It took me like two weeks.  It's got like 12 of those and it's got all the little windows. And I just sit there and worked on it, worked on it, worked on it. But it really made a dramatic difference in the way that figure looks. Oh, I know. Let's see. Where's the windows for this bastard? My arc windows are there in here somewhere. I mean, that's a whole decal sheet of just gazillion windows. Oh, here it is. Yep. As you can see, I've already done the big ones. I really like the sales shaded stuff. I do too. There's a lot of people that don't, but I like that comic book cartoon look. And I love the window decals because I personally cannot stay in the translucent windows. Because every one of them, you look through the window, you see all the hinges and all the robot junk. And just not a big, just not a big fan. Yeah. All right. Where are we at? Okay. What's the worst figure so far you've grabbed this year? Tracks. Yes. Tracks. And just because when I got him out of the box, he was fine. And then I set him on the table and he about did an ab crunch where he just, he just did this thing. And his legs are still so floppy like, and it's just not the legs. We're not like that side piece tabs in. It's the knees. It's the joint on the, at the above the knee that rotates.  There's no sense in it being that complicated. Yeah. To fold his legs up into a car mode. Yeah. It's almost like, give me G1. I'll just push him together. Yeah. I think with that kind of that flip hinge, or like the fender fold flips over, that creates a lot of that problem. I figure they could have done something different than that. And also with Kingdom, it was one extreme or the next. You either had really, really good figures, or then just garbage figures.   I forget who else will then wave one, which were great figures. You get Warpath. I wasn't a big fan of Warpath. Love the character. Yeah. G1 Warpath was one of my favorites.  With the legs. The bulky legs. Yeah. It was crazy. Most of those figures in that line are pretty solid, right? You know, straight out of the box. There's no flypiness for the most part. Most of them are tight, nice, tight joints. I'd like a figure like that because you know, eventually it's going to wear loose or whatever. But that tracks, you pull it out of the box. It's almost like somebody's been playing with it for like 10 years. They're just like flopping around. I just didn't see that anywhere else in any of the figures in the line. And then you get ones like Huffer, which are outstanding. Yeah. And you're thinking to yourself, it's Huffer. Who would have thought you'd get a great Huffer figure? Yeah. Huffer's a favorite figure of mine. Just because I was like the first minibot I ever had as a kid, that and brawn. Gears was my first minibot. And I think I got Bumblebee and Cliffjumper. But I got the red Bumblebee and the yellow Cliffjumper. Oh, OK. I wish I still had those. Yeah, yeah. That's worth something right there. I've always thought about trying to hunt those down. I'm like, eh. Yeah. I never had Bumblebee. I think I got, when I got Trypticon, when I got a G1 Trypticon, the guy bought it off of me threw in a Bumblebee. He's like, oh, I had this line around. He can have it. Sweet. Huffer is so hard to find for me cheap. That's the big thing anymore with this kingdom line. I know once that first, once a wave's gone. Yeah.  Beast Wars Megatron kingdom line is like 70 bucks right now. Really? Well, same way with Studio Series. Bert was looking for a slag. And I think the cheapest on Amazon right now is 70 bucks. And that thing just came out like two months ago. Yeah. Grimlock. You're not going to find that one. I remember when I went to my Walmart, I ate Grimlock sitting on the shelf. See, my Walmart doesn't carry the leaders, which is funny. It won't carry leader mainline figures, but I have the leader Beast Wars reissues. I've got Primal. I've got Megatron. And I just don't get it. Walmart will not carry anything other than voyagers and deluxes. The one I go and get all my stuff from, they carry everything that they've even had. At one point it had Titans, but they had definitely for sure, like up the commander class. And usually they have pretty good stock. It's just a certain time you need to get there. Like middle of the week before lunch. And you can sometimes find stuff before it gets picked over. Because I noticed some people in the area. I used to try to get to it at lunchtime, just to see what they have. And it was actually last Friday or Saturday. That's when I was there Friday morning. There was nothing on the shelves, at least nothing I was interested in. It's very well stocked, but I have everything. Went back with the wife Saturday night and just happened to wander on over. There's Tiger Tron just laying right there on the shelf. Wasn't even setting up. So I looked at him and threw him in another spot. So yes, if you find the Tiger Tron, great figure. A very surprising figure. I found he was hidden behind two or three Rhinoxes. So it made me think maybe Blaster was out there too. I've heard he's packed with Blaster. I've also heard he's packed with Rhinox again. And of course when I saw mine or got mine, there was another Rhinox on the shelf that wasn't there earlier. So who knows? We'll get them when we get them. All right. So final transformer question. What's your most anticipated figure coming out? Probably Legacy Dragstrip. I'm looking forward to it. I'm curious to see what the whole set's going to look like with Minnesota. I have a feeling it's going to be just like the Magic Square one. I do too. After reading that thing on TFW. It's going to kind of take me off. I spent all that money on the Magic Square one at DFCon. And if Hasbro's won't come out with one the same thing, I'm like, oh well. Yeah. Here's what it is. I'm curious to see. Dragstrip's favorite. My favorite StunnerCon. At least they start with a good one. Of course they started with Dragstrip and Combiner Wars too, remember? Oh, OK. Try to forget. They were awesome at the time. Yeah. I went through and did everything you could possibly do. You sang about all those Unite Warrior ones they did. So they at least did all the odd stuff too. Still waiting on a monstructor. Are we ever going to get a monstructor? I know we got a Piranha Con, but my God, I wouldn't spend that much money on that one. Man, I still got a whole set of them right there. I've never taken out of the box. Really? Yeah. Wow. I'd love to get them. What, the deluxes are 30 a pop, 40 a pop? Yeah. I mean, on the secondary market one time, they were going for $60, $70, $80 a piece. I know people were trying to sell the whole set, like $400, $500. That's crazy. See, Elite, see, he brings up something that I didn't notice until the other day that the StunnerCons are going the legacy route. You're going to have all the G1 StunnerCons, except the breakdown is going to be Armada Break, not Armada Animated Breakdown, but still going to be able to form with Minnesota. It's what I heard. I'm curious how that looks. Yeah. Well, we got a little truck with the last one, remember? Yeah.  Road? Offroad. Offroad. Yeah. Something like that. Which he wasn't bad. I mean, yeah, it's weird. It doesn't belong with the StunnerCons.  And I think they're remolding eight different types for that line. They did that with all of them, right?  They had a jet which I always thought made sense. Yeah. Because even as a G1 fan, why is there a space shuttle for them at once? Yeah. All right. Well, that's it for the Transformers Questions. Let's hit you with some YouTuber questions. Since 2019, April of 2019, how has your channel grown since we last talked? Well, I don't know what I had in 2019, probably about 100 subscribers. Now it's sitting at like 1,200. It's done very well. The one biggest flaw I have is I still have never hit the 4,000 hours, which is the craziest thing I don't understand with the amount of videos I've put out. And it's just, it gets close to it. At one time it was 3,998 hours. I was two hours away. And the next month it dropped down. It seems like no matter what I do, I can release it for a month. I did almost a video a day. And it never went above 3,700. Now once I have to be 4,000 hours of... Just hit 4,000. I already got the subs. I'm good to go now. But just hit 4,000 hours. And then it triggers the email or whatever to go into Money Ties on your channel. But I have no luck with it. The longer videos, I've done, you know, doing more content. It's just, I don't understand it. Can't hear you. There we go. What it is with this mic, every now and then we'll be talking, I'll get this alert pops up. Browser is no longer connected to your mic. And I don't know if it's in there good. Might have to get a new mic. I've had this one for a while. It was a good $8 buy from Amazon. I think I paid like 25 for this whole setup. Hmm. Well, I had a couple webcams and I discovered using my phone with a webcam app looks better than the webcams I bought. Yeah, yeah. I got a Logitech that does like 1080p. I forget what it's called, a 922 or whatever I bought it a couple years ago. It's like normally about $100 webcam and I got it for like, I don't know, $35 on one of those Amazon cyber deal things. But the quality has been, it's pretty good. Well, I think like when I was streaming stuff it picked up pretty good. The focus has always been the issue with these webcams, right? So, you know, you put it up and it blurs out. This one is actually pretty good compared to what I've seen. Well, mine's always been the lighting. Either I look way too bright or too dark. And I remember one, I'd always have to rig a piece of paper or something over so it's where I wouldn't look like I was whited out. And this one works out perfect. I got one lamp right here that lights me up great. If I use the webcams, I got to turn that lamp on. The two lamps here I use on my desk and I got a ring light over here. I have one light, one of those nipple lamps in the ceiling. You know what I'm talking about? A nipple lamp. Yeah, I'll send you a picture. Yeah, I'll send you a picture. You'll understand what I'm saying. I look way too bright because of the monitor. Yeah, I've got one of those in the center of the ceiling. But you can look at my video now. I don't have any lights. That's just the light coming off my monitor. Hmm. I got like a 35 inch monitor and so the white background right here on this YouTube screen is giving off the light. I think this one here that didn't make much of a difference. I'm going to turn the monitor here on the side. Does this kill myself? Shit. I just turned the monitor off. Ah! Good Lord. Can you still hear me at least? Yeah. I know I'm working on it. Damn technical difficulties. I turned my monitor off that has my phone plugged into it. Good job, dumbass. I hope. Okay. There I am. Let's see if you can see this. I don't know if I'll show it. Come on. I can't reach it. I'm going to show you. I'll send you a picture. You'll understand what I'm saying. I'll probably know what you're talking about. Yeah, it looks like a boob. It's so funny. It's like every time I try to do something, something will pop up. I'll pull this monitor here and the camera's coming through.  Great stuff. In Chauncey Grease, what I like about this show, the professionalism. Chauncey, you'll realize that I screw up more when I'm just with one person than if I get eight people on here. Eight people usually goes flawless. One person, you're dropping mics, you're losing cameras. Fun stuff. All right. So this is going into the good old flu that's been going around. We've been hit with a lot of challenges over last year. How has the worldly flu changed up your approach? How you do your content or has it? Not really. Not at all, actually. I mean, it really hasn't changed for me that much. I've worked the whole time. My job is like kind of required almost. We had a special thing from the governor for what I do. So I worked the whole time. My wife works in health care, so she has to work. She's writing the thick of that stuff, so no option to. So nothing really changed. The craziest thing is like going different places and seeing how that affected. Like stores, so many people in the store or thing or the ones like going to another state and there's like no mask and I've been like wearing a mask the whole time. I went to South Carolina and was like, you know, have y'all even heard of COVID? People just walk around. I thought it was great because I wear one like 12 hours a day all the time. So it was nice to not to wear one. Yeah, that was so weird. We went to TF Con in Baltimore and they were just like enforcers around and of course the rules at TF Con was you wore a mask in the dealer area, which we did no problem. That's the rule. We get out and want to talk to each other and we take the masks off.  So of course, Bert and I did it the best like, well, they say you don't have to wear a mask if you're drinking. You always have a drink in your hand. There you go. You're wearing pocky hot chips.  All right. Let's see. Is there anything different you plan on adding to your channel or and have you thought about branching out into other topics? I thought about doing more comedy stuff and I don't know I don't know what it means yet, but I'm gonna do something different. Comedy means funny funny skits or something. You know, just, I don't know. I'm not a serious person. I'll be honest with you. I like to have fun. I don't take stuff too seriously or anything like that. So like to take it easy. I'm going to lead back for the most part. So I feel like the videos I do I try to do my videos are basically when I do a figure, it's how if you bought the figure took it home and we're doing transformation right there. I don't practice transformations. Anyone I've ever done is just me going through it right there. I don't do it multiple times. It's one transformation. Read the instructions and do it. I even do third party figures like that. You know, I go through and they might have 50 steps but I sit there and just go through it and just edit it together. So it looks like, you know, I'm doing it back to back. It's if you with me, there's sometimes I'll just take it right out of the box and transform it as I go.  Wait a minute. I can't cut out the pauses in my video. He opens right out of the package and here you go. Of course, like I said, with this big master right here and the problems Kato dealt with, I wanted to get him down pat to make sure it worked all that fun stuff. Yeah. But like you, man, I didn't have one day when the virus first hit I think they worked this cause there wasn't anybody coming into our offices so they would let us each have one, we'd alternate like an extra day off per week. Yeah. That lasted like two weeks or like I held just do as normal. I work from home for maybe a month for like two days a week and the rest I would go in. But after a while, I was like, wow, it's you know, you're sitting in, I'm sitting in my, we have a bar, island bar and put my laptop on there. I'm drinking my coffee and doing work. And I'm like, I'd rather be at work doing it. It's just, it's too laid back for me. Oh yeah, too many distractions at the house. Yeah. Next thing I know, I got YouTube on in the background. I must be working. I think it was a one time right before I got to know you as you were doing an interview show on somebody's channel, I was playing in the background and I was like, hell yeah. My channel. All right. Well, let's see question number nine. Man, we're flying through these and you can tell we're tired. We just won't get over. Maybe we can hop in with the audience here later on. I got a question. As a channel creator, what advice would you give to new tubers starting out? Don't quit. Don't quit. No matter it. I never thought I'd get 10. Then I never thought I'd get a hundred. Then I never thought I'd get to a thousand. And now I never think I get monetized by will just just have to you get to a point where like, damn, this is just it's not worth it. You know, maybe I shouldn't do it.  I'm going to do all you're doing it wrong.  It's a hobby. Any money I would ever make on this channel wouldn't be nothing but just buying more figures to throw in the channel anyway. So it's not like, you know, I'm going to go buy cars or anything like that. It's it's a hobby. It's fun. It's it's enjoyable. I like to edit in part. A lot of people don't like that. I think that's where you discover how good you are creative because I can edit out all my screw ups. I like that more than the actual like bigger part of it, you know, opening the boxes and all that stuff. But it just takes a while to figure out your niche. I mean, what works for you. Yeah. All right. And I guess last question. Now it's time to promote yourself. Please tell our viewers about your channel and do you have any special shout outs and real quick if you are not subscribed to Inutabi, I have a link to his channel in the description of this video. So the channel is basically I do mainline third party transformers. I do I do Motu. I do some Star Wars and trying to sort of get out Star Wars a little bit just because it's not doing not fulfilling my fun need, I guess and it got woke, didn't it? I don't know. Just I was in there. I buy these figures for the Mandalorian. I was like, now just set them on the shelf and they do nothing for me. I'm like, why am I buying these figures? That's going to me. I was a huge Transformer fan and I've collected so many figures. I mean, half of this collection used to be half and half Transformers in Star Wars and then just Transformers are just more fun. Yeah. Transformer back and forth, you know and that sort of holds more I don't know nostalgia for me because I remember more from playing with Transformers and G.I. Joe and stuff like that. I did Star Wars and I had Star Wars. I was like super young. Were you around in 1977 when it came out? Oh yeah. Okay. Me too. That's the first movie I remember seeing in the theater. Me too. My parents, my parents took me to that and I went with my parents to every Star Wars movie released up until I like the prequels. I didn't see Empire in the theater when it first came out. I saw that. I saw Return of Jedi. I even remember when I was a kid, you know the scene with the scout bikes are going through the forest. I was sitting there with my dad. When they go where the tree is, I ducked. I was going up under the tree and my dad looked over me like, what? I remember that Rancor scared the hell out of me that's for sure. All right. Well, that's that's pretty much. Well, wait, did you give your shout out? Oh, no. I want to give a shout out to Kato Larkin Sardo, the reject cons. Deluxe Baldwin who was a fantastic person human being and just loves Transformers so much. He is fantastic. Let's take a look at Deluxe right here. I don't know if you've seen this one or not, but here's a Merry Christmas from Deluxe.  Of course, Burt and I are like three margaritas in at the time. Good times. Good times. That's it for my questions. We are at 35 minutes. Chat, if you got anything you want to interject with or talk to, we can do that for a little while longer. I don't want to keep being new toby on here long. Like you said, he's he's got to go to bed, go to work in the morning. So if anybody got anything, we want a shout out. You want to holler at, you want to say hi. You know the cool thing about going to work in the morning though? Most. Well, I don't get paid for it is I can leave whenever I want to because I'm my own boss pretty much. So I have one boss, but I can leave and I go to Walmart and I go to check out the toys and I go to GameStop and go check out the toys and then I come on. That's what I try to do. If I can get Dylan to school in time, Walmart's on the way. And if I got at least 20 minutes after dropping him off, I'll swing my Walmart real quick to see what's going on. Yeah, I'm looking for that blaster tomorrow. So I hope that I can get him to Yeah, I've already been asked if I'm I'm in no rush. It's funny. I used to worry. Oh, I gotta be the first one to review it. Now I'm like, they're gonna watch me no matter what. Yeah, I've definitely learned that doing this and another big thing I can point out for new tubers. Don't buy figures just to review. Oh, yeah, and a lot of stuff that you don't want. I did that. I'm like, I don't even like this figure. I don't even like this character. Why do I buy this toy? Oh, elites hit me with the first super chat for the night. $0.99 Of course, not much. I can get $0.99 anymore. I used to be able to get at least a bag of chips. But thank you so much, elites and we'll give you the brand new Bert that everybody just absolutely loves. Oh, dear Jesus. The dear Jesus is underappreciated in that video. Yes. I had it. That was one of those talented edits that I had to get that in.  All right. Hold on. Here's one for you. If you were to design a transformer, what alt mode of action and name? Oh, okay. Transformer alt mode Apache 64 helicopter faction subcon.  Oh, my favorite bird. Well, I was always a fan of the hind helicopter for some reason. I always remember that 24 or whatever. Quintessential 80s Russian bad guy movie always had the hind helicopters. Oh, Chauncey's hitting again. Inutabi, what's your favorite transformer media? Comic show, movie, etc. Out of that, which one I like the best probably the shows because I still go back and watch like I went back spent like a whole day just watching on the Asperal channel, like all the G1 stuff. I just put it on video and let it play and I forgot like a lot of stuff. If you don't watch it often, you're like, oh, that's right. I forgot about fricking cosmos being asked to go back out to see the asteroid in space for prime like four times and complaining about it. I always like the voices and one of my favorite underappreciated voices in G1 astrotrains. Oh, yeah. It's such a cool voice. Oh, Jason, thank you so much for the super chat. Jazz is the coolest transformer let the arguments begin. Let's see. What shall we give? He's no mirage, but he's all right. Hey, home. Hey, man, that's so... I've been smoking since I was born, man. I could smoke anything, man. You better light it in here, man. That's gas moves, man. God, I've watched those movies a lot. Buffer video. I don't know if you've heard. When I first made that one, I had Bert and I reversed, but you couldn't tell the difference with our faces. Those apps are kind of freaky the way they are. There's some I'm not going to show on here. They're that bad. I always like jazz. It was funny when in 84, I got jazz for Christmas, but he broke right out of the box. His door just snapped. The next day after Christmas, we went back. I was going to get another one and they didn't have any more jazzes. So I ended up getting a Sunstreaker instead and I never got another jazz until 2013 and I had a Shard of Con in Charlotte. Yeah, I never had jazz. Actually, the first jazz I ever got was the Studio Series. Well, no, I had a third party masterpiece version. I still don't want to reveal the shield jazz. I love that one. I think I still have it. It's over here somewhere. All the white Autobots blend together this far away. Well, my friend, I guess that is pretty much it. This is a quick one. I wrapped it up really fast. Oh, he's in terrible condition. I remember the Cookie Chris jazz. Which ones I've heard of it? I'm trying to remember. He was a special one you got. I think you turned in points of Cookie Chris cereal. Okay. I think just heard something move. Hmm. Oh, Fire Tox mainframe done. Love listening to a good interview. Fire Tox, thank you so much for the super chat. Let's find you a good one. Let's see. Everybody likes this one. One of those dog dogs. Here it is. It was a male away sending X number UPCs and check for sipping. Okay. Shipping. I love the typos.  I do that a lot like a text message. And then I have to go back and put the correct word right up under the message I just sent. Especially if you're messaging, if your friends are like my friends, any typo, they're going to come back on you hard. I get a GIF. Like making fun of what I just said or something like that. That's like Kano texting something the other day. And he said doing his truck. I'm just going to say something else, but doing his truck. And I said, man, I know you like transformers. That's taking a little bit too far. Oh yeah. Kano killed Optimus Prime today. Do you see that? Yeah, I saw that. It happens when you set it home and you don't leave and go to work. You come up that wild stuff. I think it was. He sent us as a message. Yeah. Yeah. He's having fun with his gun. They've done another one, right? Didn't they do it? Well, what's funny is there's this one. This is the green one. This is the exclusive. This is the limited edition. This is not the one I ordered. I ordered the blue because the blue was cheaper. They sent me the special edition. And I ain't even mad. Yeah. That's nice. And the bullets, the bullets are really cool. They come with shells.  And I've really noticed there's something in there. Something they're weird. I've noticed with them is some bullets fire better than the others.  I was shooting this thing last night carrying it cans. And I'm knocking cans off of a box. And then I put this other bullet in and you pull the trigger and it just fell out. So I tried it again. It just fell out. I put the other bullet I was already using, shot and took another can out. So I don't know if there was a hole in that certain one or what. But the instructions are really clear on how these work exactly.  It comes in the bag of bullets. Like a fireman. I don't know. Now you're supposed to use this to push the rubber section up in through the casing. You actually get a lot of bullets. I've got one that went into an alternate dimension. I've fired three bullets. I've got all of them together. One's in the in the chamber right now and then another one I have no idea where it went. And it was the one that I accidentally fired when I was trying to figure out what exactly fired the locking mechanism. I hear it hit the wall and I'll find it when I'm cleaning. That's funny you're talking about plastic bullets. I saw it the other day. They're making polymer bullets now. Really? Polymer casing. For like H&K's developing a new gun that uses like a polymer case. It's a plastic bullets basically. Yeah, check this out. When we all decided to get these sniper rifles it all started. I think I found a video and I shared it and as soon as I shared it, I think that video popped up. As soon as I shared that video then T-formers shared it. So we all start looking when we saw TF Source had them. We saw AliExpress had them. TF Source was a pre-order for February and you paid whatever shipping was. Then we looked at AliExpress and they were like $30 cheaper but then you had the weight and we decided hell let's just go with AliExpress and see if we get them in time. So I believe it was Firetox Cato, myself Bert, maybe Matt all ordered these sniper rifles at the exact same time exact same day. Cato got his a day before me. His broke. Mine showed up and it's the one I didn't order but seems other than having to fix the firing mechanism seems to be really good. Yeah. Firetoxes, they just canceled.  And then Bert, having heard anything from Bert, he's not as far as I know he hasn't got his yet. He's been really busy lately. He's not been on the chat as much. So So what do they do? Just cancel your order and refund your money and they don't say why? I don't know. This was my first AliExpress order. I was got a pair, I mean freaking Chinese company I really didn't want to order from it. Yeah. Yeah. Not doing wish. Bert got mic'd. That's what we started calling it.  Well Ian Utabi, this was fun catching up with you again. We're almost in an hour.  Let you get to bed. I'm going to go down and thanks to all my co-workers and people on Facebook. I started watching Yellowstone and finished season one last night. So I'm getting ready to hop on season two. I've watched some of it. It's good. Very good. It's very good. Hopefully I can get on some reviews tomorrow.  Hoping I find a blaster. Yeah. Good luck to you brother. I appreciate it. Well, thank you so much for hopping in and everybody in the chat. Appreciate it. That's always a good time. We enjoy these. It's good to hang out. This is another one of those benefits that we don't really talk about that much as far as new tubers. But right here is another great benefit of doing this is the people you meet. Oh yeah. Yeah. And that's awesome. I'll tell you Larkin, Kato, Sardo, I talk to every day. Every day. Every morning. We say good morning to each other at like 0500. 530. We're texting back and forth all through today. I don't really have any other friends other than them because, you know, you get older people go for your friends that you hang out. Especially when you collect transformers. I'm the same way, buddy. When I got back from TFCon it was depressing. I got back home. I mean, yeah, I have my wife and my kid and I'm just like, God, I miss those guys already. It sucked. And of course we were on chats all the time. I told them today, so we got to get together again. It's been too long. But it's just amazing the friendships you make doing this. Well, I went when I went down and hung out with Kato. It was the toy hunt fun. The part was fun, but I felt like I was hanging out with somebody I would have hung out with, like, anyway take transformers out of it. Yeah. Well, I'm hoping to meet those guys again in February. There's a comic con in Roanoke that I'm taking to and Kato said he may head up that way, so we'll see. I might go too, because I'd be awesome. I'd love to meet you as well. Yeah, Roanoke's like two hours and something away.  Where I'm at. Yeah, it's like two hours and 45 minutes. I looked it up. I think it's about an hour and 50 maybe for me. Cool. That'd be awesome to meet everybody. I'll be dragging Dylan along. Daddy, I thought we were here for me. Well, it's too bad. All right. Well, guys, once again, I appreciate each and every one of you spending your Friday night with me. Big shout out to InuTabi for agreeing to spend the night with me on the live show. Don't forget to like. Don't forget to subscribe. I'll tell him that. This is the Patriot Prime and InuTabi signing out. Hoorah!


So, it's my pleasure to introduce Jesse Olbert, who's a graduate student in ancient history and Mediterranean archaeology. And I had the experience of working with him on this project in the Hearst Museum recently, where we're going to hear about how we analyze the ancient public. And it's an interesting challenge with these additive materials like metals and ceramics to use XRF to decipher a little bit about the recipes that were used in these materials, which is pretty different from what I'm experienced with using it on lithics, which is, of course, a track that we don't have the issue of mixing different types of sources. So I'm interested to hear what you found in our work. Thanks for joining us. All right. This is my first time wearing a wire, so that's going to be a little wonky. But thank you, everyone. I'm fighting a cold right now, so bear with me if I need to take sips of water and things like that. All right. This summer I was lucky to study an ancient Greek bronze helmet at the Hearst Museum. The primary members of the team were myself, Jared Delaney, and Nico Trivsevich. Using a portable X-ray fluorescence or PXRF spectrometer, we measured the chemical composition of the helmet at the Hearst. The study produced several interesting conclusions about the helmet's production history and the metallurgical practices of ancient Greece. PXRF technology has been around for some time, and archaeologists have been using PXRF spectrometers and archaeological sites and archaeological material all over the world. As usual, classical archaeologists have been a little late to the draw, and as far as I'm aware, this is the first study to use a PXRF device on Greek armor from the Iron Age. So we approached this project with many questions and few expectations. In this presentation, I will introduce you to the object, briefly explain the science behind our study, present our results, and show how this changes our understanding of ancient Greek metalsmithing and military technology. So without further delay, here's the helmet, Object 8-45-97 at the Hearst Museum. It is 22 centimeters tall, 24.1 centimeters long, and 17.5 centimeters wide. The thickness of the metal is 1.5 millimeters, and that's kind of an average, because it's not consistent at all. Stylistically, it looks a lot like the Corinthian typology of Greek helmet, which is the most popular type of Greek helmet in the classical period, but it retains several unique and unexpected features. I use the term protocrinthian in my title, and I'll explain exactly what that means later in the presentation. Roughly equidistant holes run all along the bottom edges of the helmet, which you can see pretty well in this slide. Yeah, that works, okay. These must have been accommodations for an internal padding. The object was constructed in two pieces, which are held together with a series of rivets. Most of the rivets are now lost, but we still have a couple. There are long fractures running above the middle of the left and right eyes. Over the left eye are the partial remains of a rectangular patch riveted over the fracture with four rivets. Only half of the patch and two of the four rivets remain in situ. I guess you can't really see in this slide, but it's way up here. We'll get a better image of it later. On either side of the seam between the two halves, there are slightly circular-ish equidistant holes, which you can do those little white dots, and then there are remains of others. In conjunction with a small loop at the back of the helmet, these holes probably facilitated the attachment of a horsehair crest or some other decorative extension. It has a flattened neck around the backside of the helmet. It does not have ear holes, and it has squared cheek guards, which are not detachable. This last observation may seem self-evident, but it's actually a really important stylistic determiner. As you can see in this slide, the helmet is dented and damaged. On the right side of the helmet, there are two long horizontal dents and several circular dents. This is one of those circular dents, and then of course the big one. Caroline Weiss, who originally published this helmet in 1977, argued that the long dents were created by an axe and the circular dents were created by sling bullets. Other scholars have gone a step further and even suggested that these blows are what killed the original owner of the helmet. I remain unconvinced, of course, but our understanding of ancient Greek warfare has actually changed a lot since 1977. These objects were probably pretty expensive and only reserved for aristocratic minority. The material itself might not have actually provided much in the way of a physical defense, as all the weapons in this period were constructed from iron, significantly harder metal than bronze. So we might be better served thinking of this helmet as an object of display rather than a physical military tool. The PXRF spectrometer that we used in this study was a tracer 3SD, pictured here on the left and being used by Niko on the right. The spectrometer is just a handheld version of the much larger and immobile XRF machine. It is a non-destructive but less accurate method to measure the elemental composition of an archaeological object. The device emits a highly charged photon into the object. We determine the energy and size of this photon beforehand. The photons emitted by the PXRF spectrometer enter one of the atoms in the object and collide with one of its electrons, usually within the electron ring closest to the nucleus. You can see that here on the left. When an electron is knocked out of its ring, the magnetic field within the atom gets all wonky and an electron jumps from an outer layer down into the lower ring. Electrons in this lower ring require less energy than the outer electrons and the excess energy is released during this process in the form of a photon and the atom stabilizes, which you can see on this last image. The spectrometer then measures this released energy. It's measuring that little yellow line. Most atoms have three rings of electrons and these rings are called the K, L and M series, moving from the inside of the ring to the outside ring. When electrons from the next highest ring jump into the K series, they release what we call a K-alpha photon. When they jump from the outside ring, we call it a K-beta photon. On average, an atom will produce one K-beta photon for every six K-alpha photons. Sometimes we hit the electrons in the L series of an atom rather than the K series. Atoms behave a little bit more chaotically when we knock out one of the L series electrons, but this process is still predictable and trackable. Ideally, we'd like to fluoresce the electrons in the K series because they are the easiest to measure by far. In theory, the energies of every photon in this process is unique to each element in our sample. The frequency of a particular energy signature will therefore tell us the density of each element. Of course, nothing in nature is ever uniform, and there are thousands of variables that might throw this process out of whack. But in theory, this is supposed to be how it works. As I mentioned earlier, whenever you use one of these PXRF spectrometers, you have to pre-program the energy of the photon and aim it at a specific group of elements. Bronze is usually composed of nine parts copper and one part tin. Copper is Cu29, and tin is 50. So these elements were the primary targets of our study. We set the device to emit 40 kilovolts of energy at 12 microamps through Brooker's yellow filter. In other words, we limited ourselves to fluorescing elements between chromium and antimony in the K series. So chromium is here, 24, and antimony is there. So everything in between these for the K series. And anything heavier than Presidium, which is right there, 59, so everything heavier than that in the L series. Another way to think about this is that we could only read energies between 5 and 30. So you can't really see it on the slide because it's a little fuzzy, but 5 energy for the K series is right there, and 30 is right there. So we can only read things in that range. Sorry, it looks better on my computer. All right. Once we get the results, they come to us like this as a spectrum. We have to manually identify every element in our sample. The biggest peak in this slide represents the K alpha of copper, and the smaller peak is the K beta, which is unlabeled, though K betas are not labeled. Sorry, lost my place. As you notice, the labels for lead and arsenic, PB and AS, are overlapping right here. These are blown-up versions of the same test shown in the previous slide. Unfortunately, the K alpha of arsenic and the L alpha of lead are only different by 0.01 kilovolts. Luckily, the K beta peak of arsenic, which this blue line represents, shows us where it should be, this beta peak, does not overlap with any other element, so arsenic is still detectable and relatively distinguishable based on the K beta peak. This is just one example of the potential difficulties of this kind of study. Luckily, there were only trace quantities of arsenic in all of our samples, whereas there was always a substantial amount of lead. This spectrum was actually our first shot on the helmet. We shot a total of 30 points for a length of three minutes at each point. There are 11 points on each side of the helmet, three on the rivets holding the two halves together, three on the patch, and two on the patch's rivets. The resulting spectra were studied individually and as groups corresponding to their location on the helmet. The sampling process was conducted in a closed museum space over the course of a single day, and we used two methods to interpret the resulting spectra. The first method is, in my opinion, the least valuable because it is the most seaving. I was provided with an algorithm from Bruker, the manufacturer of the spectrometer, that calculates the chemical compositions of each spectrum. The algorithm addresses inter-elemental interaction, distinguishes overlapping elements, and compensates for numerous other variables that might skew the results. It is the most accurate methodology for measuring chemical composition, but only when you already know exactly which elements are in your sample. If the algorithm compensates for elemental interactions that do not actually exist in your sample, then your results will be skewed and inaccurate. This, of course, creates a paradox because you can't build an algorithm until you know how much of each element is in your sample, the algorithm that Bruker sent me was their general catch-all algorithm for archaeological bronze objects, and actually after doing some research, I think it was an algorithm that they invented for bronze cannons that they took out of the Caribbean. So the algorithm assumes that there was magnesium, iron, cobalt, nickel, copper, zinc, arsenic, lead, tin, and antimony, so those are all those up there. In reality, we did not detect any magnesium, cobalt, or antimony, and only trace amounts of nickel, zinc, and arsenic. We know for certain that the algorithm was not working properly because it produced negative percentages for some of the elements that were not actually present. Consequently, the results from the Bruker's algorithm needed to be treated qualitatively rather than quantitatively as a guideline rather than a conclusion. But luckily, as a guideline, they're actually really reassuring. The primary interpretive methodology that we used to understand our data was to calculate and compare total photon counts. Using the RTAX software, which is a more general XRF program, we identified each element in our 30-spectra. Based on the elements we identify, RTAX cancels out all the background noise and produces total photon counts for each element. On their own, these photon counts don't really tell us much. There's just way too many background variables. For example, this method can't accommodate inter-elemental interaction or overlapping elements. They cannot be used to calculate a percentage of each element in the sample. The value of a total photon count is that it allows us to create comparable ratios between two or more elements. The relationships between the elements in one part of the object can be compared to other parts of the object in order to learn a relative kelin composition of each of the object's parts. Like the good scientists that we are, we approached this experiment with several questions. Is the helmet authentic? Was it ever chemically treated? When was the patch added? How was the helmet constructed? And when was it constructed? The first and arguably most important question we had to tackle was whether Object 8-4597 was even an authentic archaeological artifact. It was purchased somewhere in France or Italy in 1900 by A. Emerson on behalf of Phoebe Hearst. It subsequently entered the Hearst collection without a known provenance. The absence of any metallic impurities and a relatively consistent makeup would have suggested that the object was constructed by a 19th century forge using industrially refined metal alloys. But the helmet actually had a relatively diverse range of chemical inclusions. The inconsistency of the metal suggests that the helmet was constructed using ancient metalsmithing techniques. Moreover, every spectrum contained some amount of iron, Fe, which you can see with all these little different blips of different sizes. Iron is a naturally occurring element in most European soils, and it tends to bleed into archaeological artifacts that have been sitting in the earth for an extended period of time. Although the true provenance of the helmet is lost, we can say with a measured degree of certainty that it was constructed using pre-industrial techniques and it was buried in the earth for an extended period of time. These initial observations also help answer our second question about the object. Normally, archaeological bronzes are covered in a light green patina, which is a copper carbonate. Underneath this copper carbonate, you can see the cuprite, which is a brownish, sort of reddish, and the copper carbonate is the light green, which everyone probably recognizes. It's all over the Statue of Liberty. Object 8-4597 was obviously cleaned at some point, and we can now see the clean bronze over much of the object. A hundred years ago, some conservationists would cover freshly cleaned copper objects with a zinc-based chemical or lacquer to keep it from corroding after it was cleaned. It is clear from our study that Object 8-4597 was not chemically treated. We never detected more than just a trace amount of zinc and there were no wildly unexpected elements. The cleaning actually turned out to be a huge benefit to our study because it allows us to get a more accurate measurement directly onto that shiny bronze surface. Alright. To understand the production process of the helmet and all of its pieces, we determined relative chemical compositions for each of the helmet's parts, the right half, the left half, the patch, the rivets on the patch, and the rivets in the scene. The copper and tin contents of our results are presented in this graph. I have intentionally removed obvious outliers except for those two blue points in the lower right down here. These two are from the right side of the helmet. And actually I should also explain that the X axis every tick is a 200,000 photons whereas the Y axis every tick is 50,000. Here and here is from here to here, I guess, is about from there to there. It's not between these two. Anyway, it's complicated. There's way more on the Y than you might be thinking there is. The right side is more damaged and less clean than the left side of the helmet so the low tin content and relatively high copper content in these blue points down here suggests that we unintentionally measured one of the cuprite or patina patches on the left side. Without these two outliers the right and left halves of the helmet have remarkably similar alloy typologies. Chemically, the only difference between the alloys of the two halves is that the right half had slightly more iron, less tin and more copper. All of the elemental ingredients that we'd expect from a more corroded bronze object. Once the corrosive samples are identified and excluded from the comparison the copper tin and lead contents of the two halves are practically identical. This suggests that the two halves of the helmet were constructed at the same time from the same batch of metal. The relatively high levels of tin in the patch here in gray suggests that it was constructed separately from the other pieces of the helmet. This low tin reading, the lower one I actually think is the result of accidentally shooting cuprite corrosion which covers one half of the patch. The cuprite which is two parts copper and one part oxygen causes the spectrometer to have more copper at the expense of the other elements in the patch such as the tin. Knowing this, the height of this point speaks to the higher than average levels of tin in the patch. The rivets on the patch here in yellow had lower than average levels of tin than the body of the helmet. The rivets in the seam in green have higher than average levels of tin. It's clear that all the measurements from the rivets fall within the larger range of values for the two halves of the helmet. But I argue that these divergences are still significant. Most importantly, the segregation of the points above and below the body's average into two distinct clusters suggests that the rivets on the patch and the rivets in the seam were made at different times from different elemental recipes. Second, the rivets both on the patch and in the seam are less thoroughly cleaned than the body of the helmet itself. Actually, you can see the cuprite covering half of the patch there that I was talking about earlier. The original conservators took care to define the rivets but they did not remove much of the cuprite. We therefore should expect the device to read much higher levels of copper and lower levels of everything else. The photons from the PXRF spectrometer had to go through the entirety of the cuprite layer before they could fluoresce any of the tin atoms below. But in fact, the copper levels in the rivets in the patch were lower than many of the measurements from the left and right halves of the helmet. So even though they're lower than some of these. This suggests that the body of the helmet, the rivets in the seam, the rivets on the patch, and the patch were all forged at different times from different recipes. The lower levels of copper are the results of a higher secondary element in the original mixture. The secondary element was lead. As this graph shows, there was a notable amount of lead in every one of our measurements. On average, the rivets in the seam and on the patch had higher amounts of lead than the body of the helmet and the patches itself had really huge amounts of lead way, way up here. Again, these characteristics support the conclusion that the patch, the rivets, and the helmet body each had different production origins. But why lead and why is there so much of it? Why use different recipes for different parts of a single object? And is this event even intentional or is it just a consequence of pre-industrial metalsmithing techniques? I think it's fair to assume that ancient metalsmiths intentionally use different elemental recipes for different object typologies. I've already argued this point in several forthcoming publications for the ancient Greek Bronze Age and I don't think it's too much of a stretch to extend this assumption into the Iron Age. In fact, I think this study directly supports that conclusion. That being said, the Greeks themselves did not distinguish between copper and bronze. They referred to both with the Greek word of calcos. Practically speaking, this kind of makes sense because most of the copper ores from Greece that we think were being used in antiquity are what some archaeo-metallurgists have termed to be a dirty copper which just means that it's copper that has more than 1% arsenic. This is why we look for arsenic in our study, actually. Arsenic copper bronze actually behaves very similarly to tin copper bronze and where I work on Crete we actually have pure arsenic ingots so we know that they would extract the arsenic from the copper, use it for trade and add it to forging recipes when they wanted to specifically make an arsenic copper bronze. Tin is much easier to work and stronger than arsenic and by the Iron Age not all bronze objects were constructed in a tin copper bronze. Tin directly increases the hardness and tensile strength of the object and in this cool graph I found so this is like how much more tensile strength than regular copper these different levels of a tin bronze and the reduction levels are referring to how much they hit it after they made the object and so what I find really interesting is that the 75% so reducing it more causes it to have less tensile strength and if you worked it more after the fact if it's a more complicated object then it's likely to have less tensile strength. The slightly higher levels of tin would have made the rivets in the seam in the patch stronger than the body of the helmet. This is exactly what you would have wanted for these object typologies. The rivets needed to keep the helmet together and the patch needed to protect the break. Lead has a relatively low melting point and it is very heavy. On the microscopic level however lead crystals do not actually mix very well with copper and tin crystals and actually this is a close up of a copper alloy and all these little grey blobs are the lead that hasn't gone into the object really and just kind of just stay there. This means that lead makes metal much easier to pour and denser but much more brittle. This is probably added to the recipes of the rivets for its forging benefits and to the patch for its added density. The high amount of lead in the patch would have made it heavier and a duller grayish color than the rest of the helmet similar to some of these lead weights in color. It probably felt great having a heavier and colorfully distinguished patch over the break on your helmet but it was actually more susceptible to shattering from blunt force than the rest of the helmet because none of that lead really seeped from an archeological perspective the fact that each piece of the helmet had a different production history is actually rather remarkable it suggests that a lot more work went into the object than we might have expected if an ancient metalsmith knew he needed to rivet the two halves of his helmet together why not make the rivets at the same time as the body of the helmet? Similarly, if he knew that he was going to rivet a patch over a break, why didn't he make the rivets in the patch all at once from the same or a slightly altered recipe? The results suggest that the rivets were constructed much earlier in bulk to be used in any or all situations that they might be applicable Ancient Greek metalsmiths probably forged a whole bunch of generic rivets all at once and then kept them around the workshop for future projects I come from a family of mechanics and my father always had a box of screws a roll of duct tape and a rubber band ball close at hand whenever he worked in his workshop and I think that the ancient metalsmiths probably had the same sort of idea the dissimilarity of the rivets on the patch seemed to suggest that either the helmet was repaired in a different workshop from where it was constructed or that it was repaired much later after the metalsmith had exhausted and replenished his box of generic rivets Object 8-4597 was probably forged in five steps forged one half of the helmet then forged the other half of the helmet pick out the rivets that you need from a box of pre-made rivets rivet the two halves together and then finish the object they would have been pretty time-consuming and laborious but it didn't require a huge amount of metalworking skill on the part of the metalsmith later Corinthian helmets were always forged from a single piece of bronze without any rivets they were constructed in three steps forged the helmet, shaped it and finished it they required less time and less labor than their two-piece predecessors but much more skill I say predecessor but we don't actually have a hard date for Object 8-4597 and there is only one other two-piece Corinthian helmet from ancient Greece this helmet is pretty poorly preserved and it was discovered at the back of the museum's storeroom at ancient Olympia without a label and without a known fine spot the chronology of the Corinthian helmet is actually a huge problem for ancient scholars the oldest one-piece Corinthian helmet the helmet in this slide was discovered in a pit at Olympia lying next to it was this decorated amphorescos as you see on the left and in this much simpler helmet on the right the amphorescos probably dates to around 700 BCE the conical shaped helmet officially of the Kegelhelm typology is the oldest helmet type of the Greek Iron Age so altogether these three objects were dated to the end of the 8th century based on these relationships most Kegelhelm helmets like this one found in Argos probably date to the last quarter of the 8th century BCE its style and design is reminiscent of the late Bronze Age helmet and it fits neatly into the larger archaeometallurgical narrative for the Eastern Mediterranean the cap of the helmet was constructed from one piece of bronze and the cheek pieces and the neck guard were riveted onto the cap crests were always popular helmet additions in antiquity but they were usually constructed of wood or horse hair rather than metal as it is here in fact I think this is one of the few metal crests that we have at the same time that the Kegelhelm was popular on mainland Greece several artistic depictions of an emerging style of helmet appeared on the island of Crete in the south and so here's Crete down here and if you're totally lost this is mainland Greece and this is Turkey alright let's see yeah these images come from the bronze plate found in a late 8th century Cretan tomb at Kavusi actually Anthony Snagras who wrote the first and last major catalogue of ancient Greek helmets identifies the helmets worn by the archers and the man between the two women over here as vaguely early Corinthian style-ish helmets based on the style of the crest the curve of the helmet at the back of the head the shape of the neck and the cheek pieces he identifies the helmets worn by the men and the chariots as the Kegelhelm typology the line on these helmets between the cheek pieces and the cap might imply that the cheek pieces were riveted onto the cap the cap itself is conical and the crests are very similar to the metallic crest of the Argos Kegelhelm although these are the best images that I could find it seems clear to me that the artist was trying to create a distinction between the helmets worn by the archers and the helmets worn by the charioted figures the Kegelhelm was a open-faced helmet while these early Cretan helmets have a relatively enclosed face open and enclosed faced helmets were in constant competition for most of antiquity unfortunately there are no archaeological examples of this 8th century Cretan helmet that we see in these images what does emerge from Crete by the middle and the end of the 7th century BCE is a whole series of beautifully decorated helmets with repose and incision these helmets do not have complete nose guards many of them have fitted cheek pieces which conform to the shape of the mouth so this little right around where your mouth would be this design feature was way before its time in the 7th century and wouldn't be seen on the mainland until the beginning of the 5th century BCE about 100 years later these Cretan helmets like objects 8-45-97 were constructed from two pieces of bronze and riveted together vertically below the crest of the helmet and you can see the line where the rivets this is what I've met right there it goes underneath this is a visor that's attached it's impossible to know whether the earlier Cretan helmets were constructed from one or two pieces because they're only ever tested in art and these characters are only ever shown in profile I think it's fair to assume that they were two piece helmets because of the later traditions two piece helmets required more time money and labor than one piece helmets and if they had the technology for one piece helmets in the 8th century then they should have had it in the 7th but they clearly don't so it follows that the helmets in the 8th century images must have been two piece helmets this narrative gives the Cretan helmet typology a very logical progression from 8th century through to the end of the 7th century BCE as metalsmiths constructed constructed this helmet type again and again it took on a more sophisticated design and developed into an object for artistic expression and aristocratic display on the mainland the narrative is much more complicated the current narrative says that the open-face Kegelhelm developed into the Illyrian style the early Illyrian style of helmet started to appear at the very beginning of the 7th century BCE the eastern-esque cone was removed from the top of the helmet but the harsh vertical cheek pieces remained instead of riveting the cheek pieces onto the cap, Illyrian helmets borrowed from the Cretan style and were formed from two pieces of bronze riveted vertically along the crest and actually this image of an early Illyrian is only half of the helmet we lost the other half of the holes where the rivets would have gone although they borrowed metal smithing techniques Illyrian helmets remained open-faced like the Kegelhelm type later Illyrian helmets, like the later Corinthian helmets were constructed out of a single sheet of bronze for the Corinthian helmet this is the current narrative down here while the Kegelhelm was developing into the two-piece Illyrian helmet and eventually the one-piece version one-piece Corinthian helmet appeared just after the introduction of the Kegelhelm at the end of the 8th century more traditionalist scholars have liked to point to this archeometallurgical narrative to praise the brilliance of Greek craftsmen the complicated one-piece Corinthian helmet seemed to basically spawn from nothing this narrative doesn't really sit right with me you can probably imagine and it was constructed to accommodate this extremely early one-piece helmet found at Olympia several scholars including Anthony Snodgrass have voiced their concern over the date of this object these three objects were found in a pit at Olympia one of the most important religious centers of ancient Greece these objects are not related to any one architectural feature so the objects might not be in their original contexts and may not actually relate to one another chronologically a priest might have simply pushed these objects aside to make room for new dedications they were not particularly flashy or decorative and there is some debate as to whether the Amphiriskos and the Kegelhelm are even contemporary and I would probably argue that they're not in reality this deposit might represent three separate dedications made over a period of 100 years for these reasons I do not think that this iteration of the Corinthian helmet belongs at the end of the 8th century and instead we should place it towards the end of the 7th century around the time when the Greek when Greek metalsmiths started to experiment with the one piece Elyrian helmet design if we ignore this seemingly misplaced Corinthian helmet there remains an important gap in the development of the Corinthian style object 8-45-97 might be the missing link between the earliest styles of Greek helmets and the later Corinthian helmets if we accept this progression for the Cretan helmets from a rudimentary enclosed style to a complex style that addresses the specific needs of the wearer then maybe this is an alternative reconstruction for the development of the Corinthian helmet and object 8-45-97 is our missing link a proto-Cryntian helmet on the mainland the Kegelhelm was the dominant helmets typology of the 8th century BCE this helps to explain the images of men in Cretan helmets fighting men in Kegelhelm helmets because it means that these two helmet types were the only helmet typologies in the Greek world during the 8th century sometime around 700 BCE Greek metalsmiths began to tweak the Kegelhelm design borrowing from Cretan metalsmithing techniques one group of metalsmiths produced a new and improved open-faced typology which became the Illyrian style this has always been the narrative for the Illyrian style but what I'm suggesting is that another group of mainland metalsmiths adopted both Cretan metalsmithing techniques and the enclosed Cretan helmet in order to create the proto-Cryntian helmet this interpretation makes Object 8-45-97 a rough contemporary to the earliest Illyrian styles meaning that it was probably constructed in the first quarter of the 7th century BCE as ancient metalsmithing techniques became more sophisticated mainland metalsmiths figured out how to create their new Illyrian and Corinthian typologies from a single sheet of bronze unlike the Cretans mainland Greeks were able to work with the metallurgical traditions and memories of the Kegelhelm in a way the Corinthian helmet is a hybridization of mainland and Cretan metalsmithing ideas of the late 8th century it was the enclosed face alternative to the open-faced Illyrian helmet although Snoggrass did not know about Object 8-45-97 he did know about the two-piece Corinthian helmet from Olympia the one that was found in the back of the storeroom he suggested that it might actually have been one of the helmets depicted in Cretan bronzes if he's right it would make the Hearst helmet even older than what I proposed a contemporary of the Kegelhelm in the 8th century but again I don't think that's right first off the Cretan helmets don't have nose guards and it doesn't make sense to me that they would suddenly abandon these if they existed in earlier versions of the helmet it also brings back this proposal also brings back to the forefront the issues I took with the traditional narrative for Corinthian helmets it seems unlikely to me that this relatively complex design simply spawned out of nothing whereas the Kegelhelm has clear Near Eastern origins to sum up this study offers two important conclusions about ancient Greek metalsmithing and ancient Greek military technology first the chemical diversity of the helmet's body its rivets its patch and its patch suggest that every piece was forged at different times from different recipes this means that metalsmiths probably kept a large number of premade rivets around their workshops they could use in any of their projects this in turn speaks to the relative sophistication of the metalsmiths themselves and gives ancient rivets a sort of one size fits all quality rivets were used in many different objects of varying shapes and sizes from large vessels to small knives a metalsmith probably had to keep a range of rivets close at hand further PXRF work needs to be done with rivets specifically to better understand how this really worked the second conclusion rewrites the narrative of ancient Greek defensive technology the single piece Corinthian helmet did not miraculously spawn from nothing but instead represents the confluence of mainland and Cretan metallurgical traditions it achieved the cranial strength of the kegohelm of the facial protection of the Cretan helmet the proto-Crentian helmet was an important first step as early 7th century metalsmiths struggled to achieve this balance this historic interpretation fits neatly into the processionalist reading of Greek archaeology the one that Anthony Snodgrass came up with but it relies on a pretty shaky evidence admittedly I expect that our understanding of ancient military technology will continue to change as classical archaeologists publish new objects and use new technologies to challenge entrenched narratives we will never know for certain where or when object 8-45-97 was actually excavated but that doesn't preclude it from helping us understand ancient Greek military technology and ancient Greek metalsmithing thank you we have a few minutes for questions just straight yeah this is related to you were saying this was related to rivets well I was thinking that yeah well it's related to anything this is a study they did on just any tin copper bronze and the way that they did they measured it very scientifically the way they did reduction because they had little samples and then they basically measured and everything else so what do you think is going on when you have across one say a hemisphere of a helmet chemical of consistencies that may have had something to do with thermal regulation during the process what wars they were using what fuels they were firing because in a reduction atmosphere you're going to have to deal with fuels so what's your take on what was going on with those consistencies as opposed to somebody working with maybe more standardized range of rivets that come from you know particular type of technology this is generally my problem with all metallurgical right now because we use things like this all the time where we look at what people have done in a closed setting but it was way more chaotic one of the things that I it was completely random and it's really hard to know how they were doing it and actually I did a lot of work with ingots with bronze ingots and one of my favorite things about ingots is that you can always if you look at a microstructure on the inside the part that was touching the mold was completely different shaped than the part that was open to the air because just because the difference in temperature between the mold and would have completely changed how the metal formed so it's just chaos and a mess so I don't really know but I do think that the fact that the two halves are related suggests that they were under the same conditions when they were made and the fact that the other pieces are slightly different that they must not have been in similar conditions but there is the possibility that he could have just waited a day and then made the rivets or something like that so I'm knowing that down the road they can use different techniques to reform those little guys as opposed to the techniques needed to form the plates I'm very interested in the sequence of operations in which people might have organized their labor in their materials it's interesting to think about if somebody mentally mapping out how much tensors they can get if they don't overly reduce something that's interesting perhaps different hands in the process my general theory is that it was all done by color rather than anything else and I think that they cared more about the color than the actual properties that the metal provided on Crete we have a whole bunch of arsenic really heavy arsenic bronzes that would have, because arsenic starts to evaporate before the copper forms so it's all on the surface so if you would have touched these things for a really long amount of time you probably would have started to poison yourself but they really liked it for jewelry and my theory is because it looks very similar to silver and they were trying to copy the look of silver so I think that they cared more about what it looked like especially with these things which everyone always likes to look at helmets and say this is only about a millimeter thick and it's copper against iron it's not going to do much it might just be more important to think about how brittle they're making the metal and if you get a rotation for a helmet it cracks when it gets packed and they're on the way to trunk a few more people buy your helmets because their stuff is fragile and actually the later Corinthian helmet that I showed has the same break over the eye and so when I came into this I was wondering if maybe it was a manufacturing because everything is so random maybe they just had a whole bunch of pre-made patches too or something like that and they just made it and then did it but who knows yeah taking into account the Hearst helmet that you looked at and given the millimeter, millimeter and a half thickness and given the design it clearly limits the ability to see, hear and shout out why would one want to wear one of these in battle it doesn't seem you're getting much of any history could be psychological there's someone actually you mentioned the tin hats of World War 1 things like that that sort of like it feels good to have something metallic and shiny on your head if you're going into battle I think also I think that these things were not necessarily always worn in battle and that these sorts of helmets and things like this were the kind of things that you would put up on display or just wear around the city in order to show off that you're the soldier and everything else then again it could also be there's another theory that the guys who were wearing this were just kind of standing there not doing anything so they didn't really need they didn't need to communicate they didn't need to really do anything except stand there and take missile weapons in literature we do have statements made that they were worn I'm not sure if they're worn by everybody they're always worn in base painting right well that's I can understand why some people may not want to have worn them at all what I would like to do in the future is get a standard of these elemental types so that I could use an algorithm kind of the one that Brueger has in order to figure out the exact chemical composition then I can test it in the kind of ways that you would test a bicycle helmet and actually figure out if you know if the guy fell over even if it would cause brain damage or it would just that's what I'd like to do in the future but that requires more time and money Andy so no I haven't that's an interesting very interesting idea actually but no I haven't heard that one of the things I've been struggling with is the idea that they would carry swords at all because because they always carry them loosely and require two hands I don't know what they're doing maybe they're cupping it in there or something and they're all wearing enclosed faced helmets on that interesting they're working around it somewhere secondly of the tens of thousands of bronzes discovered of Olympia almost none of them are found in primary contexts they're almost all in the fields it's clear that they result from multiple clans into the Sanctuary and so in other words your point about the discovery of the Olympia helmet together with that early proto-Carinthian alabaster I couldn't figure out what it was it's labeled as an Amphirisco in fact there's no incision probably even 700 I'd say 725 700 that could be quite accidental in any pit or in any field Helena's tenement dates it but they didn't get to circle your argument what's the latest idea so I'm all alone with you messing around yeah was there anything else oh yeah so did you actually arrive at any conclusion about the dents and cracks and so on I mean did the guy really get a whack in the head I've been thinking about this yes I'm going to rock so when I was growing up I played the saxophone in school and everything else at one point I remember I was sitting and I dropped it onto my music stand and it completely folded in half just a really small distance and so I've been thinking about this as I've been going through this project and trying to come to an answer about these dents but I think at this point it could have just been the way the guy put it into a pit and it could have caused that dent the copper it can be surprisingly malleable I mean the thing about a helmet like that that's a 1-2mm thing is that it would be okay at repelling a cutting blow particularly if you had a thick leather or even wool that yeah that's the and we know that they did wear them because actually we have the gravestones where they should have had but it would be very bad at repelling a penetrating like a sphere so one does wonder in fact whether by the time that they have it reduced the thrusting sphere whether in fact that the bronze part of the helmet is essentially cosmetic I don't know if anyone's done any dating on the thrusting sphere tips and I'd be interested, I know that there was a recent book that got a lot of heat because it wasn't very scientific by Chris Matthews or Christopher Matthews we've got thousands of them so one of the things I've been thinking about on their shields which we know I mean their shields and they must have worked pretty well occasionally they have bronze decoration on the front yeah exactly so I'm wondering if it's the same thing for the helmets and the bronze is just more of like a covering less than a million to them the shield the shield faces are sort of thin like sheet paper yeah okay so these are a little bit thicker but not by much there's a helmet perhaps in New York that has a name on it how does that relate to the one of the first yeah well actually the one, the Creighton helmet is, that might be the one you're thinking of at the Met let's see it's signed it says like Nearcos Amy oh I did, uh oh anyway the Creighton helmet the one that's two rivets that's riveted together has an inscription on it and a lot of them do have inscriptions most of these objects were found in religious contexts so they were probably dedicated dedications that people made I mean to get into oh okay there it is so it actually says right here you can kind of make it out but it says I am I am of someone with a proper name so anyway a lot of these were probably inscribed after they were dedicated whereas they were probably not inscribed during production or anything else though actually they could have been I think about it but there's no nothing that we could say about that so few of them actually sit right out like I am a dedication for someone they mostly just say I am of someone or this belongs to someone or something like that any other questions I was wondering if anyone, any other studies have been done in these helmets perhaps using a destructive method like ICMS for more accurate I would love to do one of those exactly right yeah maybe a little that's really what's needed for more time yeah no absolutely we would need to do I would love to cut one of these open and look at the microstructures just at that because we would be able to tell we'd get a rough estimation of how many times the guy hit it while he was forging it that kind of thing because they didn't have squelching technology or anything like that but none of that stuff would ever happen I don't think just based on the legality of archeological objects specifically in Greece and Italy where I work on site you can't even really clean them sometimes I've had to do XRF studies on corrosion there's a ton of copper great but that's just the way the system works over there


Elix started as a master's thesis during business school actually, so we were trying to come up with an idea for a school project. We were all wearing branded UCLA Anderson shirts. Like, you can brand everything, but I can't brand a beer, which we were all drinking as well, and that kind of led us down the path of learning about the beverage industry supply chain. That was the genesis of, you know, let's figure out how to make this happen.