Looks to be a liner to Pickelhaube bead roller.

pickelhauben

Well-known member
So that is how they got those liner beads to flatten.

Great factory pics as well !

https://www.ebay.de/itm/altes-Bearbeitungsgerat-fur-pickelhaube-Sickenmaschine-Bordelmaschine-manuell/184586944762?hash=item2afa3d40fa:g:lNsAAOSwKIBf3IRB
 
Those pictures of the factory are awesome! Excellent shots of a Pickelhaube production line. Fascinating!
 
I wonder what the women in the back are working on? They appear to be all grey helmets with spikes.
 
I think we are looking at liners being put into tin ersatz hauben. The next row of tables seems to be where the visors and wappen are being put on. In the background, would those ladies not be working on felt helmets?
 
Wow! Certainly something you don’t see every day. I know a lot of people scorn ebay, but I’ve always said sooner or later everything in the world is for sale on ebay.

Steve
 
It comes to my mind, that we should establish a section here on the forum for photos like these, that show how our various helmets were manufactured. We have had other members at various times post original photos of manufacture but they are rare, and I think we should try and group them together. Regarding this photo and many of the others....they were taken during the war as part of the propaganda effort to show civilian contributions to the over all war effort. What is new for me here in these photos, is that the spike was put on the shell before the liner and the M91 side posts. I see wappen and visors on if you look closely and then I see stacks of helmets without M91 posts. So are the posts left for last so that the helmets can be stacked during production?? However, I do know for certain that these pics show liners being crimped onto tin ersatz shells. If one steps back and thinks about it, compare to the normal M95 leather helmets......the shell is stamped out (no boiling/shaping), sprayed, spike attached and then liner crimped on..no thread no sewing....dude just matches liner to slot and turns the machine crank! Good God, covid strikes again, I have nothing better to do than try to analyze old haube manufacture photos!! Stay safe everyone!
 
b.loree said:
It comes to my mind, that we should establish a section here on the forum for photos like these, that show how our various helmets were manufactured. We have had other members at various times post original photos of manufacture but they are rare, and I think we should try and group them together. Regarding this photo and many of the others....they were taken during the war as part of the propaganda effort to show civilian contributions to the over all war effort. What is new for me here in these photos, is that the spike was put on the shell before the liner and the M91 side posts. I see wappen and visors on if you look closely and then I see stacks of helmets without M91 posts. So are the posts left for last so that the helmets can be stacked during production?? However, I do know for certain that these pics show liners being crimped onto tin ersatz shells. If one steps back and thinks about it, compare to the normal M95 leather helmets......the shell is stamped out (no boiling/shaping), sprayed, spike attached and then liner crimped on..no thread no sewing....dude just matches liner to slot and turns the machine crank! Good God, covid strikes again, I have nothing better to do than try to analyze old haube manufacture photos!! Stay safe everyone!
That’s a great idea. I would love it :bravo:
 
Along with that I think it would be a great place to post period pictures of soldiers with their war trophies as well.

James
 
Having worked on a number of these I have always found it easier to put the spike on last so the more I can learn about the process the better. I have not seen a photo of how the leather helmet body is produced. I'll pay more attention and keep what I find on line. Thank you for getting us in to this. I just assumed everyone knew all about this and I didn't want to seem ignorant.
 
Several years ago Col Joe posted an original photo showing wheeled racks of leather shells being moved into what appeared to be a drying oven. Perhaps we can track that down. In the meantime, give me a few days to set up this new forum section.
 
Very interesting!

As a former Industrial Engineer and Manufacturing Production Manager I find these kinds of pictures fascinating. It's high volume production but from a process view it's chaos! Inventory all over the place, obvious bottleneck operations and no flow. Just looks like a manufacturer that got a huge order for helmets and threw people at the problem to try to meet the demand.

We've come a long way since those days.

Thanks for posting this.
 
But it looks like Ersatzhelme, so it was War-time. The normal workers were at the Front and untrained people had to do a lot more of the work. I don’t know if we would be able to maintain modern production processes and management under world-war conditions today.
 
There’s no robotic arm ?? :) Great comment though Steve, I wonder how many times a day someone knocked over those piles of stacked hauben? Actually, the pic is very similar to my "man cave " where I work on helmets :? I don't stack them though.
 
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