Posting this down here in the restoration area as it should be rather than the German Helmet area. So hopefully this negates the obvious and well thought out comments of just “poor fake”
So about 2/3 years ago I bought for £20 a post war repainted M42 shell in orange. Why? I can’t really remember but it was immediately chucked into my box of stuff I may eventually have a use for or don’t feel like displaying. Then recently me and my dad were watching people on YouTube restore a helmet. My dad brought up the topic of my yearly restoration project ( previous ones have been the 75mm kwk40 shell then a Tellermine pilz 43). I remembered I had this helmet! It’s my first time restoring a helmet so please understand if something appears wrong!
It was quite fun sourcing all the parts and quite handy for learning about German helmets in general. I found a size 66 stamp on the shell but that was about all I could find. I did find a small area of green original paint which was my original intention to restore this helmet as. But I had some spare RAL7016 paint which I chucked on as a temporary placeholder and actually grew to quite like it. Brodiebartfast then showed me his late war M42 which effectively became a template for this helmet (also thanks Brodie for the help with finding a nice chinstrap) in which I added aluminium oxide dust. I was going to do decals at the very start but then ruled them out due to the fact I think it would be too much and repro decals can never Truly emulate an original.
I am very happy with the outcome. Being a size 59 liner it just fits my head (hence why the liner has a few sweat marks already...) the aluminium oxide coat feels pretty nice to touch and strongly attached with the paint. Of course all parts here minus the shell are reproductions as I could imagine the pain that could cause here had I used original parts for this project! So overall I hope have done a half decent job in making a late war M42 helmet.
Hopefully you guys like this as well. I might do this again in the future but it would really have to be a shell with not much value left as is.
( would of added more photos but the forums uploaded thing doesn’t seem too like it tonight, will add some in between photos Tomorrow)
Cheers
John
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