How to create a German M56 Helmet

The East German M56 helmet is one of the most distinctive military helmets of the Cold War and I need them for a MOC I'm planning however there are no available LEGO-compatible M56 helmets to buy. Luckily a BrickArms Japanese WWII helmet can be modified to create a surprisingly decent alternative. In this guide I will show the process I used to convert a Japanese helmet into an M56 using only basic tools and paint. Please consider this is a prototype. When I do more they will look better. I used ChatGPT to organize all the steps.

Left picture source: https://hessenantique.com/east-german-m56-steel-helmet-refurbished/

Tools and Materials

• BrickArms Japanese WWII helmet
• Nail file
• Fine sanding tool or sandpaper (not used for this prototype but helpful if you want a better result)
• Small paintbrush
• Grey paint (I used an acrylic one)
• Varnish

Original Japanese Helmet from BrickArms

Step 1 – Remove the Rim

The first step is to file away the raised rim that runs around the entire helmet.

The goal is to create a smooth, flat edge all the way around. Take your time and remove material gradually to avoid uneven spots.

Step 2 – Shape the M56 Profile

The original Japanese helmet has a rounded and symmetrical shape that will help us. It lacks some frontal slope but it is okay.

To replicate the M56 choose the front half of the helmet and carefully file a stepped transition into the profile. The rear section should sit slightly lower than the front, creating the characteristic silhouette of the East German helmet.

Check the shape frequently from the side.

Move it up and down the nail file until you create the desired step. If you apply more effort you will get it fast so be careful you don't cut too much plastic. This applies to every time you use the nail file.

Step 3 – Remove Mold Lines and Imperfections

Once the basic shape is complete remove any plastic filaments and rough edges or filing marks.

Use progressively finer sanding to round off sharp corners and achieve a smooth finish.

If you remove too much plastic or make scratches you can apply some plastic putty over it and sand it to repair the helmet surface. It isn't easy but it is worth the try. I will use in the rest of the helmets I create.

Step 4 – Painting

After cleaning the part with water and dried it apply a thin coat of grey paint.

Several thin coats usually produce a better result than one thick coat.

Now let it dry. A couple hours should be more than enough.

Step 5 – Varnish

Once the paint has fully cured apply a clear varnish to protect the finish and improve durability during handling. I use mate varnish. Sometimes I use normal one to protect more and then mate varnish over it. I'm no expert I don't know how effective it is but I like to do it.

Final Result

The finished piece captures the distinctive shape of the East German M56 while using a readily available BrickArms Japanese WWII helmet as the base. It's a simple conversion that requires only basic tools and a little patience. The final result is a 8/10 for me if you don't mess up during the process. A proper 3D printed one will look better but oh well this is cheaper at least for me. I hope it is useful!

Profile view

Frontal view

Colditz Castle MOC

 In today's post I will show you my latest MOC: the castle of Colditz. Well a part of it at least. Since I'm a kid the story of this castle during the World War II has amazed me. Some of the most important prisoners of the Allied troops in the same castle lost in the middle of Saxony. Sounds good right?

The castle in April 1945. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oflag_IV-C

Far away from any frontier there was a castle that was used by the Germans to send the most valuable prisoners they got. Painted in a sad gray color the walls of this castle saw many escape attempts and here is where the legend begins. It started with Polish prisoners in late 1939. Germany invaded their country and some were sent to this castle now called Oflag IV-C. This place had mainly officers inside during the war. In october 1940 the first British officers arrived to the camp. Then French and Dutch officers and soldiers came included 2 Yugoslavian. In April 1941 the French officer Alain Le Ray became the first man to escape from Colditz. During the war many escape attempts were made but most of them were unsuccsessfull. From soldiers dressed up as women to a 110 kilograms glider made of whatever the poor prisoners could find. Between 30 and 36 men succeded and escaped the castle. The German garrison (around 70 men) abided the Geneva Convention and there were even agreements between the prisoners and the camp staff where the Germans understood the prisoners wanted to escape but the Allied prisoners wouldn't use borrowed tools to make their attempts. If they catched you while trying to escape you would be put in a confinement alone but your life wouldn't be on risk like in many other camps. The camp was finally liberated by the 1st US Army in April 1945. Some of the "celebrities" inside were the creator of the SAS David Stirling (little spoiler for the next season I guess if you watch SAS Rogue Heroes from HBO) the son of WWI marshall Douglas Haig or the son of the Viceroy of India. The nephew of Winston Churchill's wife was here too and Adolf Hitler specified that he was to be treated with the outmost care.

The castle nowadays. Source: https://www.the-tls.com/history/modern-history/colditz-ben-macintyre-the-traitor-of-colditz-robert-verkaik-book-review-roderick-bailey

Nowadays the castle is painted white and you can visit it if you want to. The story about it is pretty interesting and I recommend you read about it if you want to know more. It's worth to mention too that a prisoner years later created a table game and there are films and TV shows about it. There are videogames about it too like a mission in a Commandos game. A pretty interesting topic about the war.

For this build I wanted to show a bit of the interior of the castle and I decided to add too a escape tunnel like the ones the real prisoners there did. It doesn't represent any specific part of the real castle. I intended to build a smaller MOC but once I decided to use my Opel Blitz for the build I needed to make it bigger. It was worth it I would say. I really like how it looks in the build. In this build the only thing I'm not happy with is the roof. I didn't find the correct parts to do it with tiles since the 90º corner difficults all. Either I had enough slopes to do it higher plus one side would be higher than the other and that would look weird. To be fair I haven't think about the roof design until I reached that final part of the build where only the roof was left. I'm sorry for the bad pictures I took. This time most of them are done with my phone. I need to change my camera tripod! 

The build has two identical rooms.

The other room which isn't seen during the scrapping process.

The hall.

I enjoyed building this MOC. I love how the windows look specially inside. It has light too in the hall section and I love how they look. It is a build I had in my mind for a couple years and even I wanted to make it bigger it looked really cool as I imagined which is something to be happy about because most of the times the final result isn't as good as the original idea I had. The minifigs for this MOC are my Old Dark Gray Germans which use Roaglaan decals and some combos I did for the prisoners and the civilian. I had to paint again some stuff because the paint of the soldiers' gear gets damaged over the years. 

A civilian who came to assemble the door into it's place.

My favourite minifig of the MOC.

The visible room in detail.

Now the following pictures were taken with the camera and look darker. Sorry for that. 

The prisoner trying to escape.

Many thanks for reading this post guys. Here is the YouTube video I did for the build and I recommend you watch it because it includes videos that show more about the build.

Misini Arleigh-Burke Destroyer Review

Last January I received this set from Misini to show it on Instagram but I wanted to write a little review here too. As the previous models it looks awesome. I think because of the design of a ship (really long but thin) they are what looks better once displayed. It looks huge and is beautiful. But before I describe the build itself I want to give you some context of its real counterpart as I usually do. The Arleigh Burke-class ships are guided-missile destroyers centered in the modern electronic war. They owe its name to the admiral Arleigh Burke who fought in World War II and the Korean War. These destroyers have the capability to store and deploy helicopters and UAV's from their two hangars since they are big ships making 505 or 509.5 feet long depending on the version (154m or 155,3m). The production started in the 90s and once the ones in the making are completed the US Navy should have 99 of them. I'm no expert so if you want to know the weaponry it has you should search for it because it can carry a variety of guns and missiles so large that I hope the USA never invades my country. 

The build is 77.5cm long 11.5cm wide and 30cm tall including the base. It isn't a difficult build although it consists of 3601 pieces of all kind of sizes. Stickers in this set are easy to apply and there aren't too many of them so that's great because I hate stickers on sets. Quality of the bricks like the previous Misini sets I got is very good. Almost like LEGO parts. It features 2 MH-60 helicopters and the turrets and the propellers move which is a cool detail.  

All the parts come in bags like regular LEGO sets. There are usually 3 boxes per each step and there are 20 steps to do. Instructions are easy to follow as usual but this time there was a problem and there were some missing pages. I hope it is fixed in the copies they print nowadays. I told them and hours later they sent me pictures of the missing pages. 

I hope you like it as much as I do. It is very different from what I usually build and I'm quite happy with it. If you are interested here is a link to their store through my affiliate link: https://misinimoc.com/ref=ari23#

Thanks for reading!

First Chechen War MOC

 The decade of the 90s was a tricky one for Russia. The USSR fell in 1991 and then Russia inherited the crisis of the Soviet state. A moment like this feels like the perfect moment to declare your independence if you rule a region and that is your goal. So the Chechens did it. To understand why Chechenya wanted its independence we must aknowledge the many differences existing between this region and the Russian state. First of all the Chechens weren't Russians. It wasn't their ethnicity either it was their culture. They didn't even share a religion since most of the Chechens are Sunni muslims and Russians are mainly Christian Ortodox. Russia was basically seen as an invasor. Opposite to this view we have the Russian government who saw the region as an important asset to their geopolitics. It was possible that if other regions saw they could declare their independence as Chechenya did then they would declare it too and that was a threat the Russian government with Boris Yeltsin at the head wouldn't tolerate. On December 1994 the war started and around 20 months later the war finished with Russia as the loser of a war that they thought would only take days. The same story repeats over and over again huh?

Here you can see the build itself. It took me around 2 months. It has around 5 floors. The bottom ones belog to a grocery store and the upper ones are residential ones. This time there isn't a clear inspiration for the building since I couldn't find many info on the building desings of the 90s Chechenya. Anyway I hope it looks kinda similar to what the buildings looked like back then. The basement has a light I put inside the closed part (in the space behind the black bricks). This MOC isn't the one I enjoyed the most because as it grew tall I got more and more lost on how to finish the building. There was space to recreate more things (more rooms or a sewer tunnel) but I just couldn't figure out what I wanted for this build to look like when finished. Anyway I tested some new stuff that will be helpful in the future like the gap made of plates in the middle of the wall right over the car and the door of the store. It may look a bit off in this build but I will make it better in future builds. I saw people at Instagram doing it and I think it can look really good. Minifigs have also been a problem. I'm happy with how the Russian ones look even their body is from random soldiers bought at AliExpress and it looks similar to 90s Russian uniforms but it isn't accurate if you compare to their real counterparts. With the Chechen fighters I had more trouble. I couldn't get an accurate idea of how they really looked like in real life so I improvised inspired by some clips and pictures I found about the first and second of the wars happened in Chechenya in that era. The car was one of my main motivations for the build and it looks bad compared to the idea I had. It's supposed to be a Lada Niva. I need to work more on making cars. 

I will give this topic another try in the future. This conflict happened 30 years ago so I hope if somehow someone related to the war and the consequences it had sees this post or the build somewhere I really hope they understand one of the reasons for me to build and share stuff like that is to pay tribute to the many people that sadly uses to die and get injured in the wars and that we must not forget them otherwise feels like they died for nothing. Now all the pictures I took and video I uploaded to YouTube. 

Find the YouTube video here: 

Thanks for reading and see you in the next post!