PB 2 From Minnesota

b.loree

b.loree

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I am presently in the USA for the winter months and made plans with James and others to send their helmets to me while i am here. This saves on postage and gives me some challenges while I am down here. James' 2nd Bavarian Pioneer helmet just needs a front visor restitch but I am going to use it to show some of the problems which you have to watch for when doing this. Here are the before pics:
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Nickel silver trim has been removed, I always take close up pics of the subject so I know how things were "before" I remove the visor. This proved invaluable even on this project as we shall see.
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As usual, the forum picture posting is screwing up. However, this helmet has great markings 2PB 04 stamped on the left and then in ink..2PB on right. I have noticed on PB helmets in general that they have Regt number stamped into the leather like my helmet PB29. I would suspect that in this case 04 = 1904. The rear visor is on securely and does not need work.
 
Some pics taken during the restoration process. I had to repin this visor 3 times before I finally got the holes lined up properly. Obviously, I have done dozens of these and it should be simple but...it never is! :( . The problem was that these helmets are machine stitched but there is a human running the machine. So, there were a couple of holes in the stitch line that were smaller and in between the normal ones. In order to line up holes in visor and shell, you must count holes precisely so these smaller holes messed up my count. After my second pining I woke up and went back to my pictures of where the corner of the visor was positioned before.

Visor removed and ready to clean out the old thread.
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Someone has worked on this helmet before...a hand made brass washer and prongs which look like they came from a spike base fastener....too wide. :( The front visor has also had some work..a crack filled with wood filler (two white dots)
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You can see the repair from the outside as well but it will not show up here.
 

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Another great one to folow as you go along in the restauration of this helmet

Good luck brian

Jonas
 
Visor pinned finally and stitching has begun. This helmet was more finely stitched than the normal M95 so, I am using a gauge of thread that I would normally use for officer helme.
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During the stitch, I do 3 things...rewax the thread, move the needle and hang the helmet from the thread in order to tighten up the stitches. The thread must be waxed before starting (beeswax), your thread will break if needle remains in the same place (wear and tear) and thread has to tighten up the visor against the shell as it was originally.
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Things that will happen during stitching...thread will catch on anything! :-?
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The situation seen above is especially dangerous...if you just pull the thread off the finger, it will cut into the leather, it can even cut off the finger and the restorer has now damaged the liner. The thread will also loop around the spike, the M91's, spike base prongs etc. It takes approx 1.25 M or roughly 45" of thread to restitch so you have lots of thread flopping around. Ideally, you don't want to run out of thread during the process, this can be fixed but with a little care, you don't have to go there (I speak from experience).
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The frequent spike snag! You can also see that I am almost done the first stitch pass, I have one more T pin to watch out for before I reach the tip of the visor and begin to go back, to where I began. :)
 
Very interesting..looks really good. Thanks for the tips and continued success for your restoration-efforts :bravo:
 
Some pics of the completed helmet:
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Stitching complete however, you can see that the needle chips finish off of the stitch line. There is no way to avoid this and the final step is to use black shoe polish to cover this up. The polish also to my mind, protects the new thread. You can also see the wood filler, part of which has fallen out. This will be covered by the trim.
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On the way back across the visor.
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Finished....trim is back on and the shoe polish has been applied to the stitch line. There will be another helmet coming my way tomorrow, when it is posted in the US Mail! In the meantime, I have my own named Prussian Inf. officer to work on and practice my guitar. :thumb up: Live life to the full, you can have lots of rest when you're in the ground.
 
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