Obi-Shinobi wrote:tmanthegreat wrote:Very nice work! Now you need to take a crack at making a scale "pickelhaube" spiked helmet for him. I know those were mainly for show, but it would be classic German WWI
Thought about it, but I wanted to focus on late war uniforms and gear. Might still though.
Thanks.
You could possibly get more use out of your figures ( if you make duplicates of them ) using the pickelhaube troopers.
I am not sure if you know about the history of the pickelhaube during WW1.
When the war started ( 1914 ) they did indeed were the pickelhaube and it had brass parts on it with a leather body.
Knowing that the brass was shiny they used a cloth cover to cover up the whole helmet with the spike sock attached to the main body of the cover.
So it would be easy to do a trooper with pickelhaube because you would not have to make an actual helmet just a green cloth like cover with the same for the spike.
During 1915 brass was getting a little tight for the German army. They needed brass casing for bullets rather than helmet hardware . So they started to switch to steel or tin hardware with a field gray finish.
Even the officers started to switch over with zinc hardware that was gold gilted. Some of the aristocratic officers still went with gilted brass . A lot more expensive because officers paid for their own pickelhaubes. Enlisted were supplied their helmets.
Leather was also hard to come by and most of Germans supplies of leather came from Argentina. They could not get the leather through the allies blockade so they had to start using other material. ( ersatz ).
They used tin , felt, papermache , cork and of course leather for the pickelhaube bodies. In some cases combinations of the different materials.
The grey/ ersatz still had their cover but during 1915 they switched over to the bayonet style twist off spikes. The storm troopers took off their spikes on raids. So they wore their leather domed ( grey cloth covered) helmets on raids.
That rendition would be easy to do.
Another reason to have the spikes removable was if a soldier was in a trench the spike would advertise a soldier standing up so a sniper could easily pick him off. So they removed them.
Then of course in 1916 the German army started the transition to the steel helmets.
Although throughout the war they did use the pickelhaubes during parades and walking out dress.
Hope I didn't bore you guys . It has been a while since I talked about pickelhaubes.
