Steinhauer & Luck Kriegsabzeichen für Minesuch - Sicherungsverbände in zinc.

[Adrian]

After a drought of new items since July I managed to add another Minesweeper to my slowly growing fleet. This one is a zinc S&L with one of the three pin variations you can find from this maker. This pin style is often confused with Forster & Barth who used a similar type but the hinge and catches differ between these two makers.
Zinc S&L Minesweepers are notoriously difficult to find with a decent amount of finish left on them so I was quite pleased to get this one. Although the silver has gone from the spout, alot of the gilt remains on the wreath and the waves still retain their colour and still have factory laquer covering them.
You might notice the hinge appears to have been glued on and the pin is the wrong way round. I have no idea if this is a wartime or postwar repair but I suspect the latter.

[ObKrieger]

Beautiful, Adrian! Nice to see what mine should look like.

[talltom]

adrian a superb purchase the mineswepper badges always look brilliant and yours looks better than brilliant well done and thanks for sharing

tom

[CARL]

Nice award Adrian, thanks for sharing. Personally, I quite like the slight alteration/repair work that has been done to this piece. For me, it adds a little character to an already impressive item.

Regards,

Carl

[Adrian]

Another good way to distinguish the S&L Minesweepers from the F&B badges is the small die flaw which you can find on the reverse of a zinc S&L badge. It is on the left hand side as you look at it just above the waves on the inner edge of the wreath. See the image below.
Credit must go to another Minesweeper collector, NormF for discovering this feature.

[talltom]

wow now thats a good bit of reference material just there adrian thanks (its just a small flaw never would have seen it if you hadn't pointed it out)

tom

[Nick Hessens]

Very nice minesweeper badge, Adrian! Nice photography too.
Thanks for showing.

Regards

[stuka f]

Another good way to distinguish the S&L Minesweepers from the F&B badges is the small die flaw which you can find on the reverse of a zinc S&L badge. It is on the left hand side as you look at it just above the waves on the inner edge of the wreath. See the image below.
 Credit must go to another Minesweeper collector, NormF for discovering this feature.

Hey Adrian,
great input as said!
I only got 3 or 4 of those badges, and don't know by heart theyr makers.
Just to tell you I know nothing about them.
But do permit me one remark, as I was very closely involved in a Belgian badge makers history, who I think are very similar to others over the world.
Wouldn't it be safer to say that it is particular to "a" die of that maker, as I supose they had more than one die to make those badges.
I know for intance that that Belgian maker who made (among other)the pith helmet badges for the AK helmet had 3 set of die's.
Just my humble opinion...
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[Teutonicknights]

[Adrian]

Wouldn't it be safer to say that it is particular to "a" die of that maker, as I supose they had more than one die to make those badges.

Hi Kris,
Yes, I know exactly what you're saying and I completely agree with you. However, in this instance I will respectfully disagree because this flaw can be found on every zinc Minesweeper by S&L. So, unless the flaw was on every die they used it would appear that every zinc S&L Minesweeper came from the same die.
You don't find it on the tombak versions of the badge however so it stands to reason there might have been two dies to strike the badges or the tooling was reworked and tidied up between changing from tombak to zinc and the flaw created at this time. I don't believe S&L would've run two dies and two different base materials alongside each other but that's just my personal opinion and of course I could be wrong.