German helmet restoration

[popeye]

Hello. 15 years ago I purchased a WW2 German helmet from a son of a veteran. The liner is intact and overall is a nice piece.
The one issue is that the man when he was a boy painted over it in slate grey. You can see that it is green underneath.
I was wondering is there any good way to possibly remove the grey paint off with out damaging the original underneath?
I think I know the answer but wanted to toss it out there to see.
Thanks

[popeye]

Here are some pics of the helmet. You can kind of see the stampings in it.
I think the paint might be water based? When I used a damp rag gray paint came off.
Maybe I will get lucky and a little warm water will get most of it off?
Any thoughts????

[Danmark]

If water takes the paint off that easily then I would say "go for it".
You won't be hurting any of the original enamel base paint.
Just be careful around the leather. Mask it off with low tack blue masking tape so
it doesn't get wet or stained by the water based paint.
Good luck, Dan

[popeye]

I was going to remove the liner first. It is still soft enough that it wont break apart.
Someone suggested acetone. Any thoughts on that?

[Danmark]

If the split liner rivets are disturbed value will be lost and they may break.
Better not to disturb them in my opinion. Also acetone is very harsh- I would scrub
with warm soapy water first If the paint comes off as easy as you say.

Dan

[popeye]

Sounds good. thanks for the advice.

[GIZMO8Z]

As the others have said, DO NOT remove the liner. It looks like the tongues are fragile and already damaged. Tampering with it any further, especially if you've never removed a liner (they're A LOT trickier than they look) will be immediately evident and will reduce value.

Try warm soapy water (carefully!) and if that doesn't work, you may want someone more experienced to handle the paint removal for you...

[KradSpam]

The lads have nailed it. Good luck

[davejb]

I agree, to remove the liner, especially if your not used to doing so will result in very unhappy days ahead, to do so you would need to pull back the liner, which is attached to the inner liner ring and can become fragile over time, also the liner springs could snap or pull out of their slots, that is a real bugger to deal with

[LeonardoL]

IMO it looks like the original paint under the grey is already stripped?