peregrinvs Posted 15 March , 2017 Share Posted 15 March , 2017 I'm a bit of a fettler and I've had a hankering for a while to restore a WWI British Brodie helmet. Last year I took a punt on a rusty shell lurking slightly under the radar on eBay and this turned up... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peregrinvs Posted 15 March , 2017 Author Share Posted 15 March , 2017 It's a MkI that has lost it's liner, it's rim and most of the chinstrap bales. After a wash it looked like this... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peregrinvs Posted 15 March , 2017 Author Share Posted 15 March , 2017 I then proceeded to remove the rust. I started with electrolysis, but for various reasons this wasn't very successful so I went back to my usual method - dilute citric acid. Underneath the grot, a nice solid helmet shell began to emerge... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peregrinvs Posted 15 March , 2017 Author Share Posted 15 March , 2017 As the corrosion was removed, I was pleased to find specs of the original paint left. They weren't salvageable for my purposes, but they gave me some useful intel as to what the original colour had been (a muddy greenish-brown) and that it seems to have had a rough textured surface. Herewith some macro shots... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peregrinvs Posted 15 March , 2017 Author Share Posted 15 March , 2017 Now more or less clean. The chinstrap bale remnants were clearly lost clauses, so I had no qualms about removing them. I was hoping to salvage the copper liner retention rivet, but alas not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peregrinvs Posted 15 March , 2017 Author Share Posted 15 March , 2017 To fill in the pitting I painted on and sanded off thick coats of primer undercoat paint until the surface was more or less level. This is actually quite slow and laborious, but I got there in the end. I was also careful to paint around the worn but legible 'BS 97' stamping. (W. Beardmore & Co Ltd of Glasgow) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peregrinvs Posted 15 March , 2017 Author Share Posted 15 March , 2017 And so onto the painting... My paint colour recipe is very simple and arrived at via a lucky guess: it's a 50/50 mixture of two paints from the Homebase 'Home of Colour' range: 'Chocolate' and 'Camouflage'. The former is a medium/dark brown and the latter is a pale olive green. Put them together and you get a green tinged khaki brown. I only needed two tester pots worth which cost me the grand total of £3. :-) I've been gradually putting on thin coats and today I put a coat on immediately followed by an even sprinkling of sawdust. And that's the texturing sorted... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peregrinvs Posted 15 March , 2017 Author Share Posted 15 March , 2017 I've since put a couple of coats on top of the sawdust and it's looking promising. I'll add some pics in due course. I also need to add some repro chinstrap bales obtained from Military History Workshop and finish off all the paintwork. Then on to adding a repro liner and chinstrap... Stay tuned folks... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GRANVILLE Posted 16 March , 2017 Share Posted 16 March , 2017 I don't want to spoil the fun but the practice of texturing the paint did not come into use until after the war as far as I am aware and again, as far as I am aware, the medium used was sand rather than sawdust. David Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grovetown Posted 16 March , 2017 Share Posted 16 March , 2017 1 hour ago, GRANVILLE said: I don't want to spoil the fun but the practice of texturing the paint did not come into use until after the war as far as I am aware and again, as far as I am aware, the medium used was sand rather than sawdust. David The British adopted the sand finish on April 11th 1916. The US used sawdust. Cheers, GT. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Henschke Posted 16 March , 2017 Share Posted 16 March , 2017 (edited) I agree with Grovetown. They were sanded if salvaged and refurbished at Calais or at unit level. An example from 11th Battalion A.I.F. Routine Orders : 'STEEL HELMETS . Coy. Cmdrs. Will render a certificate by 5 p.m. tomorrow that all Steel Helmets have been painted, sanded, and repainted over the sand. 11 Battalion Routine Orders, 11 July 1918' Chris Henschke Edited 13 November , 2017 by Chris Henschke Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peregrinvs Posted 16 March , 2017 Author Share Posted 16 March , 2017 Hmmmm.... And I thought I was doing so well. When I was looking into this I found various references to Brodie helmets being coated in sand, sawdust or crushed cork. So were British helmets only finished in sand? When I was looking for pictures of original finishes online, some of them looked more like sawdust or crushed cork than sand. I'm fairly confident (as shown in the pictures above) that it originally had a 'lumpy' / textured finish. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grovetown Posted 16 March , 2017 Share Posted 16 March , 2017 1 hour ago, peregrinvs said: When I was looking for pictures of original finishes online, some of them looked more like sawdust or crushed cork than sand. I'm fairly confident (as shown in the pictures above) that it originally had a 'lumpy' / textured finish. It's generally held that the sand and sawdust finishes are virtually indistinguishable in photographs, so I wouldn't worry about it unduly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grovetown Posted 16 March , 2017 Share Posted 16 March , 2017 14 hours ago, peregrinvs said: And so onto the painting... My paint colour recipe is very simple and arrived at via a lucky guess: it's a 50/50 mixture of two paints from the Homebase 'Home of Colour' range: 'Chocolate' and 'Camouflage'. The former is a medium/dark brown and the latter is a pale olive green. Put them together and you get a green tinged khaki brown. I only needed two tester pots worth which cost me the grand total of £3. :-) And FWIW, I think the colour is pretty good - and another couple of coats on top of the sawdust would get you nearer to the effect you're after. Cheers, GT. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peregrinvs Posted 16 March , 2017 Author Share Posted 16 March , 2017 17 minutes ago, Grovetown said: And FWIW, I think the colour is pretty good - and another couple of coats on top of the sawdust would get you nearer to the effect you're after. Cheers, GT. Thanks. And having applied three coats since putting on the sawdust, it does look quite good. (Which makes it more annoying) My paint supply is now quite limited as I've just discovered Homebase have discontinued the 'Chocolate' paint in tester pots. If I want to buy more, it'll be a tenner for 2.5L worth... Perhaps I shall pretend it's a recovered and locally refurbished helmet - and it so happens they used sawdust rather than sand to add a textured finish. (Hopefully this isn't totally unrealistic) It's already 'refurbished' in the sense that it is no longer in factory trim - having lost it's rim. There's what's described as a MkI on the NAM website that has lost it's rim: http://ww1.nam.ac.uk/1904/news/brodie-helmet/#.WMqLtdLyi70 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grovetown Posted 16 March , 2017 Share Posted 16 March , 2017 (edited) 52 minutes ago, peregrinvs said: Thanks. And having applied three coats since putting on the sawdust, it does look quite good. (Which makes it more annoying) My paint supply is now quite limited as I've just discovered Homebase have discontinued the 'Chocolate' paint in tester pots. If I want to buy more, it'll be a tenner for 2.5L worth... Perhaps I shall pretend it's a recovered and locally refurbished helmet - and it so happens they used sawdust rather than sand to add a textured finish. (Hopefully this isn't totally unrealistic) It's already 'refurbished' in the sense that it is no longer in factory trim - having lost it's rim. There's what's described as a MkI on the NAM website that has lost it's rim: http://ww1.nam.ac.uk/1904/news/brodie-helmet/#.WMqLtdLyi70 Sorry to disappoint: but the NAM is just wrong, as oft so many museums are. (This is the place - I shall withhold the name - where a Very Senior Exhibits person told me that a US-made 14 Pattern pouch, green as per the original specification, was actually Australian and had been "camouflaged"). The image is from an original specification shared by a forum member here. Note the last sentence. Cheers, GT. Edited 16 March , 2017 by Grovetown Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeyH Posted 16 March , 2017 Share Posted 16 March , 2017 At the risk of upsetting everyone, I have to confess to taking air rifle potshots at an original Brodie hanging on a wall. This back in the 1950's, it was found 'under the stairs', at my Gran's, so would have belonged to her brother, who served in the K.S.L.I. Would that I had it now. Hang head in shame. Mike. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peregrinvs Posted 25 March , 2017 Author Share Posted 25 March , 2017 The story resumes... As mentioned, I got as far as putting a layer of painted sawdust on the exterior and I didn't think it looked too bad. But as discussed I hadn't done my research properly. So off it had to come... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peregrinvs Posted 25 March , 2017 Author Share Posted 25 March , 2017 Ah well, these things happen. I've since acquired a small quantity of sand and have cooked up a new batch of paint. I think I slightly prefer the MkII paint mix to the MkI - slightly more brown and slightly less green. Here's a picture of the repainted interior. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peregrinvs Posted 25 March , 2017 Author Share Posted 25 March , 2017 I've since added some repro chinstrap bales and have put a couple of coats on the exterior. Hopefully in the next day or two I'll add a coating of sand. Stay tuned... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peregrinvs Posted 29 March , 2017 Author Share Posted 29 March , 2017 Exterior repainted. Sand added. Repro chinstrap bales added. These came from Military History Workshop. Close up of chinstrap bale. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peregrinvs Posted 29 March , 2017 Author Share Posted 29 March , 2017 Sand overpainted. Now to start thinking about installing the liner. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeyH Posted 29 March , 2017 Share Posted 29 March , 2017 (edited) Very nice, but shouldn't this have a sawdust coating? Mike. Edited 29 March , 2017 by MikeyH Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Khaki Posted 29 March , 2017 Share Posted 29 March , 2017 And to complete a 'sandbag' cover, ? seriously though, a labor of love, well done, looks really good ! khaki Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pioneecorps Posted 30 March , 2017 Share Posted 30 March , 2017 (edited) Great restoration, no sawdust or sand on mine, with a 2nd pattern liner Edited 30 March , 2017 by pioneecorps Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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