Garde Dragoner Officer Restoration

b.loree

b.loree

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Another project sent to me by Scout2017, a Garde Dragoner Officer. This includes finish repairs, clean all fittings, and install an original Garde star replacement. The refinish work is the challenge here and will take the most time. These are the "before" pictures.




Extensive crazing/gouges on the visor caused by the chin scales. Joe wants these removed.




Areas of missing finish and crazing.




It is hard to imagine how the garde stern went missing on this helmet, everything else is present.


The interior of this helmet is in mint condition!

There is a pushed in/dented area just behind the Prussian kokarde. I am going to try and fix this as well. To be continued, right now I have cleaned all fittings and am working on the "finish issues". Doing Alan's Garde tschapka and various projects of my own, including a Baden Dragoner officer. :thumb up:
 
Good luck on the job and keep us informed on any progres on this helmet
I m sure you will get the job done right

The patine on the bird is overall the same ,schould it not have a difrent collor where the star once was attatched to the bird itself
Must be missing a very long time

Jonas
 
Good comment Jonas, I had not noticed that. You are right there should be a difference in the patina of the wappen if the stern had been on there. The wappen has cleaned up beautifully ,mint.
 
If you take of the plate isnt there a trace left in the leather where the star was mounted or is the distance between the plate and the haube to far that those counterpins of the star did not toutch the leather
That would olso be an indicator that there was no star mounted for a long time since the wings of the bird did leave e very deep inprint in the leather

Just a first impression on the helmet

Jonas
 
The fittings have cleaned up nicely:



The wappen has been missing its star for many years. However, there is solder on the reverse of the wappen where the prongs of the star were originally fastened to the eagle. There are 2 dents in the front of the helmet caused by the star slots which again, tells us the star has been gone a very long time. The wappen marks in the finish and "shadow" shows that this wappen is totally original to this helmet. :thumb up:

The left side of the shell has a dent in it, these are very hard to fix and there is no guarantee. In this case, most of the dent has been pushed out now. The area is wet on the inside, a pad is pinned to a styrofoam head form. Then the shell is positioned so that the pad pushes out the dent...allow to dry for several days and hope for the best. :)

Elastics are used to apply further pressure to the dented area. The rear visor has marks in it as well which Joe wants removed. This is a slow process of sanding and adding coats of finish to smooth things out. You MUST be very careful when sanding a visor......you have to hold it firmly with the fingers of one hand so that no force is applied to tear the stitch threads while you sand with the other. You must also avoid sanding the stitches and cutting them :(
 
Speechless...when the Haubenwhisperer is at work!!!
:thumb up: :thumb up: :thumb up:
 
As requested, a series of fotos showing where we are at with the refinishing of parts of this helmet:

A couple of layers of finish have been applied and the visor sanded. This shot shows what it looks like before a cotton ball dipped in thinner is used to smooth things out.

In this foto, finish has been applied (shiny areas) and a light sanding will follow. The shell is coming along nicely, and is almost done.


Things are looking much better now.....take a look at these areas in the "before pics". Obviously, I have some deeper marks to fill in on the rear visor.


Front visor after a coat of finish has dried.


Chin scales have been cleaned as requested.

A series of pictures showing where the finish work is at right now......almost done.

[/


 
Nice job!!!

Can you tell me how's the product called that you use for the finish? After seeing the nice results of the restaurations, i'm thinking about trying to restore a helmet myself.

Greetings

Pickelhaube
 
Oh my God....what have you done with the chin scales and the spike ?!?! Both parts are completely polished ! :-? The metal parts are different now. The gilding is now completely gone. This is not good.

Best regards,

Dragoner08
 
Calm down man.....leave those brass parts in your basement for like six months and they will get back a really nice yellowish color.
 
It´s simply a question of opinion...

Some like it shiny, others like it untouched.

As Dragoner, I would never polish some metal parts with such a beautiful "historic" patina. However, I do not know which product brian is using to polish the fittings. But there are so much polishing (abrasive) products (Miror, Sidol) which are destroying the original smooth overlay of brass. They are first shining, but after a couple of days/weeks, the metal get oxydised again (not such a beautiful 100 year golden patina, but a dirty oxydation), so you must polish it again and again, and it gets worse and worse....

Philippe :wink:
 
As Brian stated on the bottom of the foto with the the chin scales it was requested by the owner of the helmet ,so his wish is Brian's command
I myself am olso not into mutch of cleaning of brass parts (well dont have too since i only collect fieldgrey) :D
If it is an old patina and not an oxidised patina i would leave it as is ,but in this case there is no one to blame since it was the wish of the owner himself
I have no doubts that brain will bring this helmet to its full glory,as with al the helmets that will pass thue his hands
Keep up the good work :thumb up:

Jonas
 
I respect everyone's opinions on this cleaning issue. I leave it up to the owner, remember the chin scales and all fittings on the Garde tschapka were left untouched. This is what the collector wanted.
 
I have switched to a new photo host. Here are some pics of the completed restoration:
IMG_5554-L.jpg


IMG_5555-L.jpg


IMG_5557-L.jpg

I will be reposting some of my original photos which have been held captive by the Pbucket Pirates over the coming winter season. At present, I am still working on the Garde Eisenbahn helme, a Garde M15 and the Ulan Officer tschapka from UR's 1,2,3 which have the FWR cartouche on the chest of the wappen. If you remember, this tschapka has a liner with a special Graf Crown and Initial. I hope that we can have some of our experts figure out who the original owner was. I will be posting the before pics in a new entry here.
 
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