There are some strange questions about Rote Kreuz dagger

[vady]

yes very nice DRK material, keep it up - the light alloy helmets are excellent to find in good condition, too. it's a niche that deserves to be explored more....

[Ron Weinand]

The manufacturers of the DRK Hewer were P.D. Luneschloss and Robert Klaas. Klaas Hewers are identified by the bottom scabbard fitting being attached with screws, while the P.D.L. did not have them in the lower fitting of the scabbard. There are subtile differences in the hilt insignia design and the metal composition of the hilt between Klaas and PDL.
I would tend to buy the Klaas manufactured hewer over the PDL, as the PDL tends to develop cracks and can fall apart over time in some cases. This is why you can find some PDL Hewers with the lower edge of the insignia panel broken away.
Some of the hewers can be identified when the grip plates are removed as the Klaas can have the kissing cranes TM stamped into the blade tang while the PDL can have these initials stamped into the tang.
Ron Weinand
Weinand Militaria

[M.E.E.]

Thanks very much for the information on the best ways to id the 2 makers. I knew about the tang markings but to be honest didn't know about the screws being a identifier. I had seen the scabbards with lower screws but just never put the correlation between the makers and them (then again I haven't owned that many these knives, but hope to fix that in the future). Since we are asking questions that aren't really answerable :P does anyone know why some of the PDL aren't tang marked or why some blades are marked Ges Gesch (patent pending) while others aren't with only 2 makers for these?

[Ron Weinand]

The Ges. Gesech. is for Patent Pending, so the DRK Hewer was a protected design and, as such, was limited to firms licensed to manfucture it, just as we see with the TeNo Hewer and TeNo Leader's Daggers (these were limited to production only by Eickhorn).
Evidently, only Klaas and PD Luneschloss qualified or bid for the contract to manufacture DRK Hewers.
The DRK Leader's Dagger MAY be a little different. We know that PD Luneschloss made these as some have the P stamped into the blade tang and the same characteristics attributed to the Hewer crossguard design is seen on the Leader's dagger in the case of Klaas, but there are other variants (some leader's daggers have a screw in the lower edge of the scabbard to hold the scabbard lead weight (but these are far and few to be found-possibly another manufacturer's variation). The Leader's Dagger is a little more difficult to pin down as to manufacturer.
Ron Weinand
Weinand Militaria

[M.E.E.]

I was aware of the Ges. Gesech. was patent pending but would there be any reason that some of the DRK hewers have this marking on the blade while others don't? Would this be a indicator of when they were made? I know it would be just guess work but I find it hard to believe companies that would be manufacturing products for the government would forget to stamp all their blades the same, I would think that quality control would oversee something like patent markings. From my understanding this was also something you would see missing from some Teno Hewers also. This is just something that has been bugging me about DRK hewers since I started collecting, that and the almost randomness of how some have tang marking and others don't.