HJ Fahrtenmesser by WKC dual maker marked

[maxxx]

... beautiful knife you have!
the wkc knife blades are very thick!
here wkc knife from my collection.
the maker coinage is unfortunately were executed very weak.
the motto is good.

regards

ps: my english is made by google translator


sorry!

[gerrit]

Scott by now you will have this knife in hand and i hope you love it!
Surely i enjoyed it

Cheers,
Ger

[maxxx]

hello,

I apologized please have looked at the knife again in waf (better pictures)
HJ Fahrtenmesser by WKC dual maker marked - Wehrmacht-Awards.com Militaria Forums
in my opinion a good copy knife.
but that's just my opinion.

-distance motto



-backgrip big rivet



-but clean blade no pliests

excuse is just my opinion!
must not be right.
I hope I'm wrong?
we wait for what the experts say

regards

sorry for my english!

[Mac 66]

max,


The knife is not a copy, going by what i see on the photos the motto has been etched a little further down blade than we normally see on other period WKC hj knifes with motto, no big deal imo, could have been a monday morning job !, rivets are made from steel & correctly riveted over on the plain grip side.


Mac 66.

[maxxx]

max,


The knife is not a copy, going by what i see on the photos the motto has been etched a little further down blade than we normally see on other period WKC hj knifes with motto, no big deal imo, could have been a monday morning job !, rivets are made from steel & correctly riveted over on the plain grip side.


Mac 66.

ok,

because you could be right.
there are apparently a lot of the time what all was not textbook.
this is my first knife what I observe

thank u. greetings

[maxxx]

an expert from Germany confirmed me the originality.
all is well.
We continuously learn from each other, our whole life long.

regards

[avenger]

Maxx, dejavu seeing you over here too isn't it?

I hope/trust Ger won't mind me hijacking his thread to add my photo shoot of this knife to the posting.

[avenger]

There have been a couple of questions over at WAF regarding this blade's motto being post war applied in order to up its value. Since this is a special blade given the 1939 date, I wanted to add supporting evidence to this thread for the forum archive in order to help future viewers be more discerning regarding it. It seems a 1939 with motto is rare enough, this may be the best case study of such an example around for the time being. The criticisms were:

The motto has been added on this blade:
1 It is obvious because the blade is marked "1939".
2 The script of the motto is quite different from the authentic version used by WKC.
3 The positioning of the motto on the blade was clearly not a success.

We know the 1939 date is both odd and what makes this knife special, but the question is if it's authentic or not. The motto placement is a bit off to the right, at least 1/4" up to 1/2" too far, which does seem like more than a minor misalignment. But, I'm told this could just be one of those "Monday morning" jobs. I would imagine the significance of this will vary from collector to collector.

The real challenge from this criticism comes from the etch script being different from known WKC mottos. The deep etch matches other examples I found, and as the script goes, I figured the best way to test this would be to compare the 1939 blade up close to a similar transitional.

Here's a comparison shot with a 1937 WKC transitional shown on my tablet screen (on top), and my 1939 knife is hovering over the screen (on bottom) (Maxxx, if you're still following this thread, the 1937 example is your WKC transitional which I borrowed for this photo):



In this photo, I cut out the motto from my knife, reduced the opacity on it to 40%, reduced its size to match that of the 1937's motto, and laid it on top of the 1937 with 2 second animation turning my blades motto on and off. The result looks to my eye like a near match, with any minor discrepancies likely due to differences in the tilt and angle of the two blades in their respective photos.



I hope the forum mods will forgive me having to link out to a hosting site for the animated gif. I couldn't see how I could upload that image here. Since that link will probably die at some point, here is a staic image of the same setup without the animation.



Long story short, it seems to me the motto holds up extremely well against the 1937.

[gerrit]

Scott, you have done a nice job with the gif overlay to compare the motto's.
I have also compared it with a few 1937 WKC Motto etched and i think they are a 100% match.
Mac also pointed out that the Motto on the 1937 WKC are identical.


Ger

[Mac 66]

Avenger,


You done a great job on the motto comparison photos

here is another motto for you to compare from a 1937 WKC transitional i used to own,

you can use it on WAF if you wish


Mac 66.