Our Process

A look inside at how we do things here at RagTop Industries. Ensuring quality & precision each step of the way, we’ve worked hard over the last ten years to develop and perfect our restoration and customization process. Below is an overview of the inner workings of the shop: 

Arrival & Inspection

Once your helmet arrives at the shop, it is logged into our system, and a notification is generated for you. Soon after that, your helmet is unpackaged, pre-restoration pictures are taken, and pre-inspection begins. Our pre-inspection is a 10-point safety inspection encompassing the entire helmet. It focuses on the condition and general protection of the helmet, Grading on a scale of 1-5, with five being in top condition. Clients are notified of any remarkable findings not previously noted, so if we encounter anything that can't be worked on due to preexisting/unseen conditions, we'll bring it to your attention before moving on further with the helmet.

Disassembly

After your helmet is logged in the shop, it will be fully disassembled. Every piece of hardware, along with your soft goods, are removed and put into your helmet bin, where they will remain for the remainder of the refurbishment process until it reaches final assembly. With the entire helmet disassembled and ready for the next stage, our helmet techs can pass the helmet along further into the restoration process to get your helmet closer to looking as fresh as ever.

Repair & Prep Work

If your helmet is getting repair work firsthand, this stage is meant for you! As the helmet works its way down after being stripped (if it was getting paint), our techs begin working on laying down compound epoxy and filler in the areas that are being bolstered. From general brim patching to crease filling or wire welding, we bang out all the repair work needed, and then we move your helmet down to our sanding booth. There, helmet receives meticulous sanding to refine & prep the surface of your helmet for additional repairs, and then for primer. Excess debris on the helmet is entirely cleared, and the helmet is cleaned off before heading over to paint for primer.

Primer

After completing surface prepping, your helmet moves into the primer stage where our techs lay down thorough coats of primer via HVLP in our contaminant-free paint booth. With this primer, the helmet's surface can retain all of the paint used on it after that initial coating fully cures and dries. This ensures that the multiple helmet coatings are physically set, and stick to the helmets surface without any flaking, sagging, or crinkling. This is quite possibly the most straightforward and most crucial step of the painting process, as it would determine the success, and capability of the helmets new coat of paint.

Paint

After a 24-hour drying period, the appropriate coatings of paint are applied over four days through our professional painting process. Each helmet is assigned to a slot on the board to track which coat has been applied, where your helmet is located in the drying room, and who that helmet belongs to. Here, your helmet is tracked day-in and day-out to get it moving along the end of the process. 

Final Assembly

At this point, your helmet has reached the last step of the restoration/customization process. Once the final coating of paint has dried thoroughly, we take your helmet out of the booth, and set it down on the assembly racks where a technician will take all of the parts being installed on your helmet, and reinstall them. It's pretty simple, but gets it moving closer to shipping each minute it gets put together. This is where your tets, bourkes, brass, liner, and much more get installed to your helmet. Once fully assembled, your helmet is looking in tip-top shape, and is ready to be shipped right back out to you.