THE ART OF USING SOUVENIRS:
What can be done with steel helmets

Who is not proud to possess some war trophy, even if it is only a shell casing transformed into a peaceful flower pot, or some harmless penknife whose blade is hidden in a Lebel cartridge? Of all these trophies, the helmet is one of the most popular. However, it has one drawback: its bulkiness. But nothing is easier than to correct this defect by transforming it into a useful object. Because one can make, with French, English, or even German helmets, an infinite number of useful objects, all the more precious because they will not have cost a maravedis and will not have that banal appearance that almost always characterizes what one buys in stores.

A clock.

English and American helmets. are particularly suitable for this use, they are pierced at the top with a hole large enough to allow the hands of an alarm clock to pass through. The alarm clock (from which the hands have been removed, generally held by simple friction sockets) is then nestled inside, "wedging" it as best as possible (a plaster seal, for example, immobilizes it very well). The hands are adjusted and the outside of the helmet is decorated with ripolin by painting the hours (fig. 1)

A lamp.

You can make the support base for an electric lamp to be placed on the table or desk yourself. But it is quite difficult if you want to have something good. We therefore advise you to buy a wrought iron lamp without taking the "glass paste" globe that generally covers it instead of 80 or 100 francs, you will only have to pay 40 or 60 francs. We can then very easily mount a helmet as the glass globe would have been mounted, which has a very good effect (fig. 2) and has the great advantage of being much less fragile than an ordinary globe.

An umbrella stand.

When we have three or four sabres, a very good-looking umbrella stand can be made by fixing the edges of the helmet, suitably notched with a file, to the bottom of the scabbards, the top of the sabres being joined by small spacers (fig. 3). In the absence of sabres, we can use the small steel tubes from umbrellas with metal frames, the spacers then being formed by pseudo "bones" of the frame, the whole being fixed by a cord or a leather lace firmly tightened all around.

For the chicken coop.

Recommended use for people who have a whole stock of helmets to store... and who, moreover, also have a chicken coop! A small hole is drilled at the front and back, on the visored edge of the helmet, through which the screw or nail used to fix the headdress on two wooden side members will pass (fig. 4). And there you have it, as many nesting boxes where the hens will settle as soon as it has been filled with straw.

Summer stove.

In the absence of gas, we are very fortunate, for summer cooking, to have a small charcoal stove. This stove can be improvised by drilling a series of holes in the center of the helmet, the opening being covered with a small cast iron grid of the model sold for a few cents in gas stove bazaars (fig. 5). The whole is placed on the stove after removing several "rounds" so that the hollow part of the helmet-stove can penetrate inside.

Chimney-top headdress.

The helmet, here, still serves as a headdress... but it only covers a stove pipe (fig. 6). This gives a little allure not yet seen to the modest chimney that is generally made do with in small garden bungalows. And it is very easy to assemble using rivets and an old barrel hoop or a piece of flat iron bought from the scrap metal dealer.

Mechanical washing machine.

To finish with another ingenious device... but much less easy to tinker with for example, especially when you want to have a washing machine powered by electricity (fig. 7). But by removing the dynamo, you can very well mount the helmet at the end of a broom handle, the whole forming a plunger in a small tub shaped by sawing a barrel through the middle part. For assembly, buy some planed oak joint cover from the wood merchant and use the doubled rod, which makes it much easier to shape the articulation points, made by bolts.

Uncle JOE.