Officers haube

[USN]

Hello all,

I have an officers pickelhaube that I picked up a while ago and thought it would be a good test of my skills as the top of it has pushed in however the spike base cut through the top of the skull. About half of the base had worked its way through the leather. Is there anyway of fixing this or is the shell a goner? Any help or information would be appreciated I am also working on uploading pictures but unfortunately I can't seem to get them small enough to load.

Thanks in advance,
Will

 

[b.loree]

Send me your pics and I will post them. Once you have the top back into position and it has dried, get some leather glue, thin leather and patch the broken area from the inside. I did a restoration (posted) a couple of years ago where I dealt with a more complete break caused by the officer base. I glued a circular patch on the inside which fortunately, was covered by the spike support disc. I filled in the outside crack with shellac finish.

 

[b.loree]

Here are USN photos:

 

[Naprawiacz]

You can also sand other leather into small pieces and bind with shoe glue. Apply the mass on the missing part of the material, and then sprinkle with particles of ground leather. Regards Wojtek.

 

[USN]

After speaking with the world renowned pickelhaube doctor Brian I have finally gotten around to repairing this helmet, we decided that it would be impossible to patch the hole and simultaneously push the top of it up properly so I will just be patching the cut and living with the slight slouch it has. Here is a quick before photo showing the dye work on the leather patch I'm going to be putting in, I think it matches pretty well.