Mecklenburg Restoration #3

b.loree

b.loree

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As mentioned previously, the rear visor was glued back on. It was done very poorly to begin with. Initially, I was not going to make this part of the restoration as, I did not want to be bothered with it. Frankly, it is literally a real pain to spend at least 5 hours trying to restitch holes that are a mm apart. It is a pain, because you seldom escape stabbing yourself with the needle causing blood to flow. In addition, I am in a fortunate position, I am retired and I do not need the work. However, the more I looked at it, the more guilty I felt and I emailed the owner asking permission to solve this problem and put the helme back the way it should be. Here are the fotos, showing the "un gluing of the visor":

This is an excellent shot showing the residue left after a very, very clumsy glue job. The visor was not even glued in the right position as you can see. Note how the card board backing on the kokarde has stuck to the shell. I will not mess with this as I have tried to take them off before, and they just tear.




The rear spine has to be taken off of course, and look at all the empty stitch holes!


The visor was literally glued to the bottom of the sweat band.

By the way, we are dealing with contact cement here, most times they used white wood glue to "paste" these on! :x
Isopropyl alcohol was applied to the stitch holes and ends of the visor to loosen things up.


What a sticky mess!


The best thing about contact cement is that it becomes very rubbery and can be "rolled" off the visor. White glue stays hard and has to be chipped off.


This is the visor as it is now...a tiny bit of residue but still ready to be stitched. Next I have to clean out the stitch holes.

Still lots of glue left on the shell, again look at the glue on the sweatband.



I still have to clean this up as much as I can. Each and everyone of those stitch holes has to be carefully cleaned out! :) This concludes this posting for now. To be continued.....
 
Thanks Francis, the 'thriller" will be continued once I get shell and visor ready to be stitched. This is such a rare and valuable helme! BTW way, size is marked "57 " and inside in pencil it is also marked: " or 08 / 30 / 97 " which suggests to me...ordered August 30 1897. I don't know if the German "order" starts with "or" or not but I suspect it does.
 
Looking great! It's good to see that isopropyl doesn't damage the lacquer, another potentially useful bit of information!

:D Ron
 
No Ron, no damage to the lacquer from the isop. alcohol. However, we have a mixture of glues here as it turns out and I do not know why. There is a section of white glue on the right side when looking at the back. This had to be carefully scraped away as it covered the stitch holes. I could not see where the originals were as they were covered in glue. There were other sections on the left side as well where the contact cement refused to let go, the finish had melted and I had to look inside the helmet to see the holes so I could clean them out. This whole process took me at least 2+ hrs to finish. Lots of fun :) Fotos of the completed visor will be posted shortly as I am half way through. B
 
b.loree said:
No Ron, no damage to the lacquer from the isop. alcohol. However, we have a mixture of glues here as it turns out and I do not know why. There is a section of white glue on the right side when looking at the back. This had to be carefully scraped away as it covered the stitch holes. I could not see where the originals were as they were covered in glue. There were other sections on the left side as well where the contact cement refused to let go, the finish had melted and I had to look inside the helmet to see the holes so I could clean them out. This whole process took me at least 2+ hrs to finish. Lots of fun :) Fotos of the completed visor will be posted shortly as I am half way through. B
Click to expand...

Sounds like a variety of people trying a variety of fixes. Might even have some hot glue there?

:D Ron
 
Pics of the completed restitch. Black shoe polish has to be spread across the stitching to help protect it for another 100 years.



Surprisingly, no blood was shed in the restitch of this visor! :)
Once the helme has been reassembled, I will post fotos of the completed project.
The next restoration posting will be that of a 1st Garde Dragoner private purchase helme. This is a family piece which dates from the early 1860's. Very cool!!
 
The Meck helme was completed last week and sent back to its owner. Here are the final fotos:








I ran into problems when putting the kugel base back on, 2 of the bolts were no longer long enough to fit through the tin disc because of the patch underneath. Luckily, I had 2 originals with longer shanks so I did get around this problem but I did have a few tense moments when I discovered this.
 
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