by
Greg Pickersgill
Now, we all know that the Mk6 comes in two flavours, the shiny shell and the rough shell, to put it simply. There are questions regarding these two finishes.
The first one is the simple one; when did the shiny finish stop production and the rough finish take over? This ought to be at least approximately established by looking the dates of helmets with either finish. From my own collection the latest dated smooth shell I have is 1986, and the earliest rough shell is label dated 1988/89. So we can reasonably assume it happened somewhere between.
There is a bit of a problem with accurate dating because many helmets have lost their manufacturers labels and dating is then difficult without taking out the liner and seeing what date is embossed on the inside of the shell - and that of course is a problem because there is no umlimited supply of CN8415 99 130 6035 Rivet Mk6 to put the liners back in again.
But wait - there's more! - I have a correspondent who reckons that part of the refurbishment and refit that we know many Mk6s have had when they're too ratty to use any longer is that the shell itself is coated with a textured resin (or something) thus transforming an original smooth shell into an apparently new textured one. His reasoning seems based on the idea that what is effectively a 'coat of paint' is an easy way to make on old helmet look as good as new.
There's a whole separate question here as to what sort of label - if any - is applied to this refurbished object. And would it reflect the original date of manufacture or the date of refurbishment?
I'm not especially drawn to this idea. I tend to believe (without proof it is true) that the rough texture of the later production Mk6 is actually an artifact of the moulding process and not a separately applied coating. I don;t know, though, whether even cutting a shell in half would prove this one way or the other as the juncture between moulding and coat (if it exists at all) would be next to invisible without better kit than I have to hand. Unless of course it could be made to peel off...
Its a genuinely confusing problem. Does anyone here have any ideas?
Bookmarks