The devil makes work for idle hands, or, the enquiring mind strikes again. Despite having a woefully inadequate toolkit I decided it was time to get a look inside a Mk7. As you probably know the main fixing of the liner is those unobtainable rubber rivets, so for this moment this is a trip with no way home. I know from experience - and the ARRSE forums - that the simple way of getting the rivets loose is cutting them flush at the surface and pulling them out from inside with pliers. This time I tried (not for the first time) punching them through with a blunted nail powered by a heavy hammer. To my surprise this actually worked - the first time it has. Of course getting them back in again is still impossible, you need the whole unused uncut rivet to refit the liner. Anyway, here’s a Before and After and a pic of a removed rivet, shown with one of the four complete ones I managed to obtain some years ago -

And here is the moulding in the crown, very hard to read even with Mk1 Eyeball, virtually impossible in this photograph; nothing really meaningful other than an L for Large and a string of numbers which are part of an NSN number, not even a manufacturers logo. But then as you can see in the picture of the label, no maker is given there either. If we didn’t *know* it was NP (now Morgan Composites) we’d never know. If you see what I mean. The label is sited in a place hard to see never mind photograph - the rear strap fixing has to be removed (with improper tools) to get a good view of it. I’ve included a pic of the rear strap nut&bolt for the sake of completism…

Now some general views of the liner and interior; the liner is still attached to the shell by a strap I didn’t want to remove at the moment. It is folded back over the rear or the helmet, so the part nearest the crown on the inside is actually the rear of the liner, and the green strap is the one I didn’t take off. The front of the liner has one of three pieces of Velcro still stuck to it, the others being still affixed to the shell.

In the following pictures you can see a vacant hole where one of the rubber rivets was removed (left), and the stub of the other showing (right), also an arrangement where a strip of fabric is looped around the shaft of the rivet between the tiner and shell, this actually supports part of the interior crown net liner adjustment as shown next - see the head of the remaining rivet on the left, and hollow where the other would sit on the right -

All quite fascinating really. Next step, get the hacksaw out and slice a shell through to see what it looks like. Hmm, maybe not quite yet…

Click to enlarge the picture