For years I've been restoring Finnish M40/55 shells to WW2 German configuration with great success. For the most part, besides those, I've been afraid to tackle other restorations that I'd be comfortable selling....until now...
I am now comfortable doing outside-shell restorations on original Romanian M39 steel helmets that were re-painted during the Cold War, but still retain an original WW2 era liner. This particular one has a very nice original Dutch liner from the original contract, but the outside had been repainted, and the chinstrap broken.
So, I also FINALLY got an almost perfect paint color match (photos don't do it justice, even though I tried without a professional studio) to the original color these would have been. I also was able to get a few AWESOME copper replica front badges with the "King Carol" crest that was discontinued (mostly) after 1940. The badges were seen throughout the war, as most guys were too indifferent to care to remove it, so that means this helmet is correct for 1939-1945 all the way through.
I carefully stripped the multiple layers of commie paint by hand, polished the outside of the steel shell, applied the badge with epoxy (mimics the original solder/brazing seen around original badges), then primed and painted the outside of the shell with our beautiful Dutch/Romanian green paint. These turned out ABSOLUTELY beautiful, and is the closest thing to having a complete, original early-war example of a Romanian M39. Since originals are EXTREMELY rare and VERY expensive, these are now worth the tedious and time-consuming process to start doing.
Whether you're a reenactor finally taking the plunge in to WW2 Romanian, or just a collector/enthusiast looking for an amazing original restored piece of WW2 History for display, you aren't going to find these pretty much anywhere else. Actual helmet is in the photos.
Since the original chinstrap was powder and almost missing, I added a SUPER high-quality German M31 chinstrap exactly how Romanians did in the field in WW2 when the crappy Dutch-made chinstraps inevitably broke.
