Rear seamed McCord with rare lower number?

[ruddersrangers44]

Just spotted this ww2 rear seamed McCord with a heat stamp of 1043G but front seamed went up to around 1135 so were these being produced much earlier than books would lead us to believe or is it a case of front seamed continuing on past the transition period but you rarely see them with this lower stamp,something to ponder over...........

[ruddersrangers44]

Just had a thought that this maybe nothing more than a production mistake and infact was meant to be a front seam that put on wrong however the rim is hadfield steel not stainless so it could well the last of the front seamed with the new rim which got put on in reverse,now im confused.com.

[geelong]

any chance of this helmet being refurbished post war and a new rim put on to replace the original rim.

[ruddersrangers44]

Well thats possible Mark who knows,also look where the heat stamp is?not in the more conventional place on the curve of the rim as most are found,certainly an oddity about this lid...............Jake.

[NickD]

maybe just one of those manufacturing anomalies that pop up from time to time ??

[gitana]

I think switching from stainless to manganese steel for the rims, and the switching of the seam from front to back, happened about the same time. But it didn't happen all at once, and I don't think the two changes were necessarily related, so overlap was bound to happen.

As to your question about the heat number, perhaps the steel sheets came in faster than the helmets went out, and a pile developed. Eventually they got to the bottom of the pile with the older numbers, but by then were making rear seam helmets. It really would be nice to have a comprehensive database on ALL shells to see if any overall correlation can be made from the heat stamp all the way through the war years. I'll just get right on that...