As much as we love discovering new and quirky product designs, there’s something about utilitarian design from the 21st century that strikes our fascination every time—particularly when it’s restored to its former glory.
YouTube creator DiesInEveryFilm Customs makes a ton of knives, sheaths, and metalworks on his channel, but his most fascinating pieces are his restoration projects. In these videos, he takes old, rusted objects and brings them back to life using his knowledge of metals.
In this particular video, he takes a WWII helmet and attempts to make it usable once again:
As with most heavily-used metal helmets, there are a number of dents on the rim which need to be flattened to give it that true, like-new appearance. He marks these and hammers out the dents to restore the helmet’s natural shape. Once finished, it’s back to more sanding to remove all the rust which has accumulated on the helmet since 1939.
Most of the restoration process just involves sanding off all the rust. After what seems like hours of sanding, the helmet looks like it did almost 80 years ago. He then rubs acetone and rust converter before leaving it to dry.
As the metal portion of the helmet dries, he brushes out the rust from the head protector before applying balm onto the cloth. He claims that it helps prevent lice from invading your scalp, although don’t take my word for it.
With the helmet dried, he starts painting it a traditional olive green. This new coat of paint makes it look ready for battle instead of the scrapyard.
All that’s left to do now is to lace the leather protector onto the inside of the helmet. As it turns out, the old lace connecting the metal to the leather broke during the restoration process, and he had to replace it. Otherwise, both the metal helmet and the leather portion are still the same 80-year-old materials used for the Second World War.
Check out DiesInEveryFilm Customs’ YouTube channel for more of his restoration projects. He’s restored wrenches, hammers, and many other old-yet-usable metal equipment.
