Excellent helmet Nicholas, that is a beautiful piece!

Yes, very nice...I have also seen split pins on officer stars before, so no problems. The condition of this piece is excellent!

Very nice Coert, congratulations! In my experience, no markings is typical of the M15's

Welcome to our forum Nicholas. I live in Canada so we are very familiar with the Brit HS helmets. On rare occasions, they do show up at our militaria shows here.

So, regarding the photo issue here, this is the latest news....the server we use to host photos (in France) had some major problems. Joel our tech guy, migrated the forum to another server until they iron out everything in France. Something must have broke during this transfer, Joel is looking into ...

Yes the pick axes here in N Am. have squared points as well. Obviously, no dug WW1 artifacts here, although some do show up at the militaria shows. Dug things here....Civil War (USA), War of 1812 (Some Brit, FR, CN and US) and Indigenous Peoples. The Native artifacts....metal European trade goods an...

Good question. De milling, “Demilitarization “. We have photos taken after the war of these steel helmets having holes punched in them with pick axes. The Treaty of Versailles required that German war materials and machines like aircraft be destroyed. So the suggestion here about this piece is that ...

Thanks Pete for your generous donation and your kind comments above. We will get this sorted. Unfortunately, it does not help that I am of an older generation and lack computer skills. Consequently, I have to rely on others ie. tech support to solve problems. Tony has been a great help and also my y...

Thanks Pete for you comments.....things are going to have to change here on our forum. I had a recent PM from a member alerting me to the fact that photos are disappearing on posts. I have noticed that photos that I resubmitted months ago are yet once again not there. This seems to happen every time...

Yes, we do have a language problem sometimes here on the forum especially with the Slavic/ Russian languages translations but knowing this, we collectors can still communicate. If you are an English/French/ German speaker, then simplify your phrases, do not use slang. Sorry Amy, I have never had a p...

My thanks to John S. for his recent donation to the forum costs. Thank you John, as always,... very much appreciated, especially during this covid 19 crisis where so many good folks are hurting. Then we can also go to Texas where I heard today, that the province of Saskatchewan is sending power down...

Well in truth the gilding done on our helme wappen is “mercury” gilding so yes, beautiful but not so good for the health of the people who made it.

Very nice James, congratulations!

I failed to mention our member Sergei in my post, both of these gentlemen take helmets which have been in the ground for 100 years + and restore them back to the way they were. I have never had that opportunity, hopefully I might be able to figure that out? :? The Russians like all of Europe and the...

No offense taken, by me here in our discussion ...Suum Cuique, everyone has their own methods which they devise to solve problems and restore these helmets! :) Wojtek and I share a love of these old pieces and frankly "most normal people" would find us weird :-? for wasting so much time on...

Awesome helmet, congratulations James!

Yes,...fantastic officer private purchase examples of what was done after the war began and we see those wide flat brads on the side posts used on kit helmets. Many times we continually find these "exceptions" things, which no one or at least us collectors here on the forum have ever seen ...

My response...I bought this product years ago and I still have this "black bar of wax" but I have never used it. To use it as shown in these pictures, you have to heat it because, it is wax. Yes, initially, it is very easy to fill in a puncture in this helmet as Naprawiacz has shown. Think...

That leather/fibre strip stitched around the inner rim of your helmet Zeb is a new one for me. I have seen thin strips of cork stitched like that on officer vulcan fibre helmets but never on a filz helme. There is always something new with these pickelhauben!

Very interesting how we collectors use different methods to achieve the same goal. I know that older chin scales used leather as a backing strip to which the brass scales were stapled. The older scales were thicker and heavier as a result. For me, I am rebuilding the chin scales of the 1890's and on...

That is a great example of the typical Bavarian imprinted markings. I also noticed in my travels that the Bavarians usually put the number first then the letters. Other more unusual placement for ink stamp markings are on the flesh/rough side of the OR’s liners. We see this in Tschapkas, and sometim...

I can only speak from my own experience John. Most prewar helmets have good inked Regt. marking but some are not . Then I have found these ink markings blotted out or ground / sanded off. This was probably done when the Germans realized that these could provide information to the enemy. Then there a...

Personally, I would like everyone to "cut Michael some slack" for our Euro members...."hold/stop judgement". Let's wait until he receives the helmet, has it in hand and can take additional photos. You know, I gut these helmets in my restorations, I take them apart.....disassemble...

I think helmet number two simply represents an older collector trying to upgrade a helmet or in the case of the officer wappen, provide something that was missing. We could also be dealing with the results of some dealer messing with the piece to charge more money. There were many pieces in this auc...

Very nice example, congratulations. I would agree, the chin strap looks to be a reproduction.

Yes I can echo that comment, I have never seen or handled one of these. I did however, get suckered into buying one of those 1970’s Brit copies years ago....a Prussian version with M 15 wappen. A lesson learned.

The SOS will never be the same without Paul, even once we get back to normal and can all attend. However, I think I can speak for everyone of the forum gang that gathers there...he will always be in our thoughts.

Joel is our tech support and he is a Master at his craft! Thanks for your comment Bob.

I like it, I would look very good wearing that!

I have never seen such a major "period repair" done on any pickelhaube in all my years of collecting!

Posting this for Steve...I knew Napoleonic versions of these existed thanks to my friendship with a First Empire Reenactor but I have never seen an Imperial German one. https://photos.smugmug.com/Kokarden/i-N5j9f9C/0/d301fcda/S/1%20L%20K%20R%201%20%20enlisted%20man%20Schabrunke%20%20circa%201902-S.j...

Good Evening to you Clovis. No problem understanding your message here on the forum, very good. You have given us the answer. Thank you,

I always wanted a French girlfriend.....I tried on several occaisions to attract a Quebecoise but no luck. Unlike you Europeans, we are limited in our contacts here due to distance. I did have some pleasant conversations with women of Slovakian heritage but again they were second generation and did ...

Ok I have previously contacted tech support but will do so again.. last weekend for some reason, the forum went down, then Joel fixed that issue but we still have problems with photos being seen. I will email him.

In a recent conversation with Tony, he alerted me to the fact that I may have caused this problem. In getting rid of SPAM, I have been banning IP addresses (whatever that is ??) My apologies.

Received, with thanks Coert , I should have posted earlier here but got caught up in everyday life. Thank you very much for your support. Stay safe everyone!

When I first met Tony years ago in person, even he did not have this M15. I bought mine 20+ years ago along with a Bavarian M15 at the MAX Show in Pittsburgh. I sold the Bavarian during a divorce but kept the Wurtt. I knew I could get another wife and a Bavarian :D but not the Wurtt. M15!! Yes Amy, ...

Yes for some reason the M15 Wurtt pickelhaube is very hard to find. Locating the wappen alone will be a challenge.

Welcome Clovis , great to have you with us. No worries on the language issue, we can work that out.

I am on it.

I ordered male and female scale ends from the Polish dealer a couple of years ago. The quality is very good in my opinion.

Yes, I can confirm that Steve.... 100% and have the spare bits of trim, rear spines in my parts drawer to back you up. Buying trim or spines or even wappen to complete these 100 year old helmets is a total crap shoot. The leather parts of these helmets have a life of their own which is determined by...

Perhaps this is a job for our resident colourist...one who has the computer program to analyze black and white photos??

One of the hardest things to do in this restoration process, is removing the front visor trim and then putting it back in place. I would suspect that there was some sort of mechanical crimping that went on in the manufacturing process. We have also seen punched holes on the back side of trim to secu...

Just purchased mine from Amazon, looking forward to reading it.

More photos: https://photos.smugmug.com/Before-Helmet-Restprations/i-PpJgNxM/0/511583f4/X3/IMG_1695-X3.jpg Stitching on a sunny day, the natural light, "lights" up the stitch line. :D In this case we see the situation after the "first pass" along the line where every other stitch...

Yes Sandy stitching in a torn, separated silk liner is not fun. So many are in this condition. The ersatz wartime ones have often just disintegrated.

The original silk will be stitched back in but there is no way that I know of to repair it.

However you do it Sandy, the results look awesome! Keep up the good work.

https://photos.smugmug.com/Before-Helmet-Restprations/i-zbzjnNP/0/1a2e22cb/XL/IMG_1670-XL.jpg The helmet size is.....54 1/2 cm. The tattered liner had to be taken out as this makes stitching much easier and my efforts would have caused even more damage to the silk. The interior of the helmet also d...