Mistreated M16

[ShapedSteel]

Hello everyone,

Last week I got this helmet in my collection. A rather beautiful helmet that has been mistreated badly in the past.
I think that the paint is all completely original apart from the obvious scratch.
Nothing too fancy but still a nice piece in my opinion, with a name stenciled inside of it that is only really visible when shining sunlight or a flashlight into it.
Would like to hear your thoughts
(sorry for the bad photo quality)

[MAP]

For being over 100 years old, it doesn't look mistreated to me..nice helmet

[TWS]

Not a bad example at all. Congrats on the acquisition.

[AndyM35]

Nice ET shell with original paint based on these photos. However, the liner does not appear to be an original Imperial German WW1 example. Based on the colour of the leather and the shadows around the tips of the tongues, I’d say it has been replaced by an Austrian or similar liner. The Austrian liners had small metal grommets for the liner string to pass through, and it appears these have been removed leaving their shadow. I think I can see the manufacturers stamp showing through from the outside of the shell on the left hand side due to being struck with quite some force during the manufacturing process which a nice little feature. The liner band may also have been replaced but hard to say from the photos, however most of the exterior pin heads look good, so it would be interesting to see some closeups of the interior.

Great to have a personal connection with the name to it! I think overall this is still a very nice helmet and will display well.

Andy

[MAP]

Well...I stand corrected

[ShapedSteel]

Thank you very much for your replies everyone.
Interesting assessment Andy, you may very well be right but to me the shadow doesn't seem to match that of an Austrian liner pad ring, but I haven't handled that many M17 liners. I will get some more closeups of it.
The pads appear to belong to the liner band, not having been replaced and am I correct in saying that the Austrian m17's didn't have leather liner bands? You have more experience with these than I do though so you may very well be right, I wouldn't doubt your knowledge.
And you're right about the stamp, it has been struck into the shell so hard that it is visible from the outside which I also liked.

[AndyM35]

For comparison, I’ve attached a couple of photos of Austrian liners complete with grommets at the ends of the pad tongues for the string to pass through. These are only examples and I’m sure there is a lot of variety. The grommets were an attempt to stop the end of the tongue from tearing. One thing you’ll often see with WW1 German liners tongues is either a tear, completely missing end, or stretching. You’ll note that the tongue ends on your liner appear to be devoid of this type of stretching. The dark discolouration around the holes is also odd - as though they were softened in order to remove something. Having said that, this liner may be something other than German or Austrian WW1.

What sort of material is behind the liner pads and what do the tongues look like? I’d like to see some photos of the liner pins, particularly the one circled in red in the image below. The one on the right looks OK from what I can see.

I think the leather liner band looks good too, and may very well be original to the helmet. I don’t collect Austrian helmets, but yes I’m pretty sure that what you’ve said is correct regarding Austrian helmet and steel liner bands.

One thing I noticed but forgot to mention was the nice AK (Abnahmekommando) ink stamp that indicated that the helmet passed inspection. I’ve circled that in green in the picture below.

[ShapedSteel]

Hey Andy,

Thank you very much for all the info, I was unaware of that the marking was an AK stamp. Very neat detail, thank you for pointing it out for me.
I have made some extra photos for you, of all the liner pins as well.

[AndyM35]

Thanks for the additional photos, they’re very helpful.

All of the pins look original externally.They also look good on the inside and still have nice green paint. The only one I question is the one below which might be a round head fake, but still a little hard to tell from the photo. Aside from that, I think the liner band is original to the shell.


In the closeups, you can see quite clearly the shadow and slight impressions around the holes in the liner tongue. So to my mind, it not Imperial German but something similar like Austrian or Czech, with the grommets removed to make it look German.

It’s still a great helmet and I don’t think that the liner detracts in any way as it still has nice paint, has an AK stamp and is named. Some imperial German helmets are in far worse condition and lack any of the above and also have no liner! So I think you have done very well with this one.

Andy

[ShapedSteel]

Hello Andy,

Again thank you very much for your replies. However, I do still have some questions. I can see what you mean with the shadow of those rings, the imprints there could very well be of rings but they are smaller than the rings. But I don't know how they were connected to the Austrian liners so it could be the right size. Are there any other giveaways other than this?
However I would like to add that the leather is very aged and in line with the aging of the liner band. The pads are also damaged in ways that exactly correlate with the liner band's wear and the stitching of the pads to the liner band also look just as old as the band itself. I have no doubts about the band being original, as it is very obviously a German WW1 liner band.
I always enjoy your insightful posts, so it's not that I don't trust your expertise nor am I in the first stage of grief as I got this helmet for a very favorable deal.

But the pads do not appear, to me at least, like a recent addition. Were these helmets ever repaired with Austrian liner parts? During one moment in the left pad's life it's ''finger'' was repaired, which looks and feels period too. Were these added period perhaps? The rings later removed by a seller thinking they were fake and thus ''had to be removed''. Something on the right side of the helmet was also obviously removed with an amateur botched paint thinner attempt.

Another explanation could be that this was done in either the 50's or 60's and then sat on top of a mannequin head creating the wear and tear in the liner pads, but I still have my doubts. I also couldn't imagine somebody ruining a perfectly good M17 to ''repair'' an M16.
I'd like to hear what you think though.

(Forgot to add the line pin you were unsure about is the pin in the back. I am personally not worried about that one at all as it's paint is inline with the other pins and the helmet's paint itself).