Restoring rusty dented USSR firefighter's helmet - VINTAGE RESTORATION

I bought this old rusty soviet/USSR firefighter’s helmet for $15. So it’s perfect item for restoration. The helmet had some dents the leather liners was dried up and the metal parts were rusty one of the rivets attaching it to the helmet was also gone, so it was nice practice for all sorts of skill needed in restoring antique and old items. I also noticed it wasn’t very well made the weldings keeping the thin on top attached were poor and it was far from symmetrical. I’m not sure if that is usual for helmets of this age. I started by removing the liner and sanding all the rust off. That took me a long while… Some areas of it had chrome on it and some didn’t and it had some bad pitting so just polishing wouldn’t have been possible or I would have had to take too much off from the thin metal. I hammered the dents as well as I could but the top piece was welded on so I would have needed a pulling device frot that. I tried all sorts of other tricks to make it pop up. I got access to welder so I tried to weld it (for the first time since junior high. That turned out ok but not something I wanted to show before griding it to final shape. I used some chemical metal to fill the worst pitting and to make the area around the welding seamless. I then painted the helmet with chrome and the emblem on the front with gold paint, although it was originally army green (maybe this was some sort of military firefireghter’s helmet?). First coat is filling primer, second is black which makes the mirror paints better and third coat is a mirror chrome. On the emblem I left out the filling primer as that would have removed a lot of detail from the emblem. I had to attach the liner between painting the inside and outside with chrome because I wanted to get the paint on the rivets for most uniform look. I used a lanolin wool care product to restore the leather on the liner. This was also necessary to remove the leather without breaking it since it was so badly dried. I remade the leather straps which were both badly damaged and I measured them to correct length for my use. Because I’m going to use this all the time… I also made the rivets myself from aluminum because no store near me had that sort of rivers and I would have needed to order them which would have set my schedule back and left me with 97 extra rivets in the already too small shed. Over all the project was very successful. There are minor dents still to be seen on the helmet because I didn’t cover it completely with bondo and hammering the dents only takes you so far because the metal gets stretched. Thanks again for watching. Please like, comment, share and subscribe as that helps me make more content. All feedback is also appreciated. I read ALL comments although I don’t have the time to answer all of you. Occasionally I answer even comments in my old videos so it’s always worth a try if you have a question to me. Music: 1. Regret - Whitesand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EENJVLv4mtg 2. Soviet anthem with "old radio effect" I made SOME OF MY TOOLS: POWER FILE: https://amzn.to/2URHvPq CHUCK NORRIS’ TOOTHBRUSH: https://amzn.to/2YfXUj2 CORDLESS DRILL: https://amzn.to/2Wois77 MY FILMING GEAR: MAIN CAMERA: https://amzn.to/2JvtKox MAIN TRIPOD: https://amzn.to/2OlpYgn MICROPHONE: https://amzn.to/2OlpYgn VIDEO LIGHTS: https://amzn.to/2FpJDaB MAIN LENS: https://amzn.to/2Fm8yMk CINEMATIC LENS: https://amzn.to/2TmNdHH WIDE ANGLE LENS: https://amzn.to/2U7iJha GOPRO: https://amzn.to/2U3eqU3 --------------------------------------------------------------------- SUBSCRIBE ▶▶▶ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf_s... --------------------------------------------------------------------- Restoration playlist▶ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVIxIjRNxFv5VRUXt66VzBxOys1GpmBp4 ---------------------------------------------------------------------