I'm afraid to say - from the way it looks in the photo - that something as pitted as this looks to have quite deep rust. It's rare these days to come across a helmet with what the Germans call 'Luftrost', literally, 'air rust'.
I've had some good success ( not with helmets, alas, but most recently with a M24 grenade case ) where what looked like 'relic rust' in photos turned out, on delivery, to be light 'air rust'. In this case, a light brush-over with a very soft, brass wirebrush followed by a good dusting-down plus application of WD40 has revealed a lot of original paint.
Title says it all?
a) That is not surface rust. When you see deep pits like this, much of the original metal is gone. Yes, it looks like it was cleaned already, the outside probably looked as bad as the inside before the work was done?
b) Corrosion usually eats through the paint first, then eats the metal. There is no paint under the rust.
c) Looks like an M35. This undoubtedly as good as the helmet is going to look, and it is fortunate to still show a spot of paint and a decal. It looks like a sealer may have been applied as well.
At this pint there is nothing left to do but enjoy it the way it is ;-)
Hi, nothing more can be done to preserve this one other than what has already been done! This is not "light rust". A decent semi-relic HEER helmet that just needs looking after from now on. Leon.
My apologies!! New to collecting Helmets, didn't think it was this advanced. Thank you for your opinions!
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