M15 JR73 Restoration

b.loree

b.loree

Administrator
Staff member
Another project I am working on, when I retired, I thought I would be bored ?????? Problems here: A new M15 liner has to be cut out of veg tanned sheep skin and stitched in by hand. The shell has to be blocked and put back into proper shape, visors stitched back on. All stitch holes must be cleaned out before all of this process can begin. Last, the wappen and spike have been brass plated by some idiot. Patches of this plating have come off and the spike and wappen are rusted. If anyone knows how to remove plating, please contact me. Another oddity and a first for me, as can be seen it looks like someone put the helme on the end of his rifle and blew the top off of the M15 fitting! The piece is not marked to JR73 but it is Korps stamped BAX on the rear visor. This is correct for the regiment.

Visor trim and spine have been painted black









Tools of the trade. The blade screw driver bit is primary for prying prongs up from the shell. The curved pliers are used to remove rusted nuts and also to further straighten prongs so that fittings can be removed. The knife blade is sometimes used when prongs are embedded in the leather or are very close to the shell. There is a definite method to dealing with prongs.

Blocking the shell: The shell was re hydrated using the plastic bag method then an antique hat stretcher and elastic band were used to put things right.

 
I've removed plating with a sand blaster, but the metal on the fittings is pretty thin and might get deformed by the blast.

This was all I could find and it deals with chrome... but might help???

http://www.wikihow.com/Remove-Chrome-Plating" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I'm sure some members have better ideas.

:D Ron
 
Thanks for the link Ron. I have muriatic acid. I will have to discuss this with the owner of the helmet.
 
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-To-Remove-Brass-Finish/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I've not tried it, but it just might work.
 
Thanks Ron, I have used Easy to clean helme wappen especially officers before. I have never left them to soak for 24 hrs though and that is quite a demonstration as to Easy's corrosive abilities. With my customer's permission, I would like to give that a try. My only concern would be that it would attack the original grey finish under the plating. However, you can keep an eye on things as the process goes on.



The new liner has been cut out. It was traced using a template I have, then cut out by hand. The colour difference between orignal and new is obvious. However, when new, this is the colour that our original M15 liners would have looked like. The new liner will be dyed to approximate the colour of the original before it is stitched back on the shell. It won't be a perfect colour match but that can't be helped. Holes are not punched into the fingers yet because the dye would bleed through to the flesh side. The correct vegetable tanned sheep skin is very difficult to find here in North America.
 
Some pics showing the use of Easy Off oven cleaner on this M15 JR 73 helme. The top was left in the solution for Approx 20 hrs. There is no doubt that Easy is caustic but did not work totally in this situation. However, there was a lot of rust here combined with plating, the rust is the worse.




Really not much change:
 
The new liner has now been stitched in. Some pictures:

Matching the colour of the original is basically impossible.

The liner has to be stitched with the flesh side out, then folded under the rim of the shell. This shows the first pass of stitching, note that there are spaces between the stitches which will be filled in with the second pass. I have to stitch round the shell twice to achieve the proper look of "machine" stitches.
The starting point on the rear of the shell.

Beginning the second pass of stitching. You can see the difference between the first stitch and the second which fills in the gaps.

The completed product. The visors will be stitched on next. Black dye will be applied to the rim in the area between the visors. The end seam where the 2 liner ends meet will be stitched up as were the originals.
 
The shell was re hydrated using the plastic bag method.

Can you tell us what the plastic bag re hydration method is please?

Should we be doing this on all our pickelhaubes?

Thanks
 
No, the plastic bag method is not for all hauben. I explained this before but no problem to go over it again. This is used when a helmet shell has collapsed inwards. In extreme cases, the shell closes in so far as to look like a collapsed foot ball, all of the leather including visors needs moisture put back into it (re hydration). Moisture is put back in by....... putting a plastic grocery bag into the shell, add a ball of wet news paper. Next place the entire lot into a larger plastic bag (preferably clear) and seal it up. The moisture in the paper fills the bag and re hydrates the leather, softening it up. Usually, you would leave this set up for approx 2 days, remove the helmet and then block it back into its original shape. However, you must keep a close watch on things. Too much exposure to moisture can cause the finish to flake off and you are into a world of hurt!! In this collapsed shell scenario, probably the visors have popped off, with moisture added, these also can be blocked back into their proper shape. You might want to use a styrofoam head to do this by pining the visor around it. You might even have to use one of these heads to block the shell....ALWAYS place a plastic bag over the head to prevent the leather from sticking to it as it dries. Trust me, any tip I give you has been learned from actual experience. We only use this method when the shell needs reblocking as in this JR73 example.
Ron....PM me and I will give you a source in the US.
My thanks for the compliments gentlemen, I was really concerned about dying the liner to get an acceptable "look" and it took awhile. It looks ok and seems to match the shell, it is a bit shiny but you have to apply a chemical to seal the dye which produces this effect. This is the first M15 natural one I have attempted.
 
Some pics of the helme during the process of putting the visors on:

The visor has to be pined into place with all holes lined up, otherwise, things get very nasty!

Things are a bit prickly inside the shell now and quite often B Loree's blood will flow! You can also see the poor quality of this shell, I have never seen one with as many wrinkles. This hat would not have been comfortable to wear in 1915.

One visor complete

Rear visor on at last. For some reason this one was a real bitch and did not want to cooperate! After one failed attempt, I had to line up the marks made by the rear spine and begin stitching in the middle of the visor instead of the corner. My only explanation is those wrinkles in the shell. I do know that they made corresponding wrinkles in the liner, where normally it would have been smooth.

Next problem, and a common one....the visor trim does not/line up with the original hole in the side of the shell. Why? Because the front visor has shrunk over 100 years. Solution, the trim has to be cut/shortened on one side and a new hole drilled for the split brad. There is no other way to get the trim back on and in place. I have not done this yet, you only get one shot and it has to be done right.
 
Thanks Lars.....the key is to get every stitch hole cleaned out and then everything lined up correctly. The holes in the side re enforcement where the M91 posts are, is especially crucial because we have 2 layers of old leather there. I have worked on converted M15's ie where they took an M95 helme and converted it to grey fittings. In this case, they sometimes removed the brass grommets for the wappen and restitched visors every other stitch hole....long stitches. They also used natural coloured coarse thread in this case. There were many war time ersatz things plus field repairs done on these helmets.
 
Finished, at last!


[/img]

Of note, the shell, once the visors and fittings have been put back on has gone back to its original "non perfect" roundness. As can be seen in previous pics, I had it in a "perfect" shape....you can only do so much with 100 yr old leather, sometimes it has a mind of its own!
 
Thanks Ron...you are no slouch at what you do either! Still pegging away at the 2 tschapkas. The humidity has been a killer here of late and this is effecting drying time between finish applications. Things dry much faster during the winter because of our cold climate. Any way around this?
FYI to all.....I had the tschapkas drying outside after an application.....there was a nice breeze so I figured...no problem. However, it is amazing how quickly these black caps heat up in the sun! I quickly moved them to a cool shaded spot and everything was fine. I wonder if the uberzug actually cooled things off a bit? There is a period reference in the book "Fritz" as to how hot and heavy the arty helmet was that he wore. Both sides must have just been "steaming" with heat in August 1914.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top