Allgemeine-SS EM/NCO Schirmütze: FAKE !

**BenVK** · 01-25-2013, 08:32 PM

I wouldn't be too worried about educating the fakers in regards to threads like these.

There can be no doubt that the clever/accurate ground up fakes are being made by people who have already invested a lot of time, effort and money to:

1. Purchase one or many original caps to dismantle, measure and study. It's all about reverse engineering.
2. Have access to stocks of period fabrics and cap parts and/or modern fabrics that are virtualy indistinguishable from original stock.
2. Have the skills and machinery on hand to assemble those materials into a hat that resembles an original in construction and style. No mean feat and contrary to popular belief, there's no way you can just knock up a visor cap on your home sewing machine.
4. Have the skills to age your fake product in such a subtle way as not to cause alarm.
5. Have the financial budget to make not just one ground up fake, but a production run. It would be financialy unviable to make just one or two, your costs would be more than your potential profits.
6. Patience. Flooding the market with dozens of fake black SS visors would ring alarm bells.

Considering the effort involved in a high quality fakery enterprise, I highly doubt that the people involved place much importance on what we write here because speaking as someone who restores such things, nothing I've read on these forums over the last 10 years has really helped me in terms of how these hats are put together or which stitching methods to use or anything like that. In all honesty and this is not meant as an insult of course but I would say that 99% of hat collectors have no idea of how a visor hat is constructed and in what order of parts, techniques etc. I've been asked to expand on this a few times and maybe start a thread in regards to the "engineering" of a German hat but this is where I draw the line. I would actualy love to go into these details and share them with you all but that would be a ridiculous thing to do and most certainly, giving too much away.

**Espenlaub Militaria** · 01-25-2013 08:32 PM

We also buy and trade your items and full collections!

**stonemint** · 01-25-2013, 08:43 PM

Ben, I agree, and well said.

**BenVK** · 01-25-2013, 09:42 PM

by Friedrich-Berthold

Attachment 454299 Attachment 454300I am sure that a close study of these sources will throw light on the object above, will it not? I will leave interpretation of these to others best able to do so....

As always, our FB cuts through the modern day hysteria and obverses the fact that fake Party items were a problem even during the period. How one could identify one these days is beyond me though.

Having said that, their criteria was less about dodgy sewing and flunky badges.

Their concern was about the miss-use of the official RZM markings and official guidlelines regarding form and function guidlelines.

**Friedrich-Berthold** · 01-25-2013, 09:58 PM

Here from Uniformenmarkt, and extracted from the Hempe book are: a.) the pieces of a cap and b.) how the pieces become a cap. If our friend in Bavaria does not do so, I will translate it all. The list of steps expressly mentions that it is a guide of the main steps, implying there are understood to be others. Wilkins included this list with his translation in his book, but it is not very good.
When I go places in Germany where the firms that provided the RZM with such, the most elderly persons at hand were small children at war's end, and they assure me that the production of these things is now done far over the horizon, i.e. in Asia, I think.

**Friedrich-Berthold** · 01-25-2013, 10:02 PM

The second book to which the first entry refers apparently never appeared, from what I can fathom.
All of these things were written by artisans for other artisans. Ben is such an artisan, I know, but he is an exception in a world where such things have become quite alien.

**BenVK** · 01-25-2013, 10:36 PM

The difference is that I cannot read these guidelines and have no idea of how limited or extensive they are. We have been through this before my friend and until you give me the benefit of your language skills, I will always be in the dark as to how it was actualy done.

Likewise, I will not divulge my handwerk skills to anyone in return.

**Friedrich-Berthold** · 01-25-2013, 11:02 PM

by BenVK

The difference is that I cannot read these guidelines and have no idea of how limited or extensive they are. We have been through this before my friend and until you give me the benefit of your language skills, I will always be in the dark as to how it was actualy done.

Likewise, I will not divulge my handwerk skills to anyone in return.

Dear Ben, I will let our HPL have a go at it, and then I will do it.

**Friedrich-Berthold** · 01-25-2013, 11:43 PM

The key to my old list here, is, of course, the system of guilds, masters and apprentices which I hardly find overpopulated in central Europe, but is a dying breed, in fact.