Pioneer Officer's visor cap

[Migobeego]

Hi everyone,

This is my new Heer pioner officer's visor cap. I just wanted to share some photos with you guys and read your opinions and thoughts.

It looks good to me, but some reassurance and expert's opinions can never go amiss. The maker is Fewegla (Felix Weissbach of Glauchau) and it presents in my opinion the characteristic construction of that maker. This maker is more known for manufacturing SS, politcal and Luftwaffe caps, but sometimes Heer caps by Fewegla do come up as well, although they are not as common. I will let the pictures do the talking:



Any comments will be welcome and highly appreciated.

Thank you very much for looking.
Kind regards,
MG.

[ErWeSa]

Very nice and elegant cap with the desirable high crown - a beauty!
I'm glad there are originals out there with a slightly asymmetric look of the side panels - I had this problem with the cap I made until I shaped it with some moisture.

[stonemint]

I think...you should sell it to me!
Seriously, killer kap, and uncommon to find Fewegla WH Officers.....

[Migobeego]

I think...you should sell it to me!

Who knows, maybe some day I get tired of it!
Thank you both for your comments, they really put my mind at ease. Since I'm still only learning to detect repros I really tend to question my own judgement when it comes to headgear.

[Migobeego]

I'm glad there are originals out there with a slightly asymmetric look of the side panels

I think it's due to a small deformation of the band, it looks a bit pushed in around that area. I measured the seams at the sides and they are both exactly 4cm. Maybe I should get a stand for the cap so the band is streached out a bit?

[ErWeSa]

Thanks for the measurement - Leo and I are trying to reconstruct such caps and the fact that the seams at the side are 4 cm is typical for the Wehrmachtschnitt of later days out of which these elegant shapes result.
I don't think that the impression of asymmetry is due to the centerband - as the top panel is rather narrow (about 24 cm?) it tends to lean to one side when not supported by the steel ring (I suppose there is none in the cap). I'd leave it as it is but you can of course put it on a stand and see what happens. You can also put a steel ring in the cap (I use some thin steel wire rope the ends of which join in a suitably thin and short brass metal tube) which will give the crown the necessary support.

[Migobeego]

The top panel is indeed 24 cm wide, but only 26,5 cm long (instead of 28 cm which seemed to be the norm)
As for the steel ring, you are also right, there is none. Would it be common to find caps with slighlty different measurements than those dictated by the regulations? -- Maybe this is necesary to achieve the famous "same plane" shape.

[seand1111]

beautiful cap.... the black piping is so sexy on these caps!!! lol

[ErWeSa]

The top panel is indeed 24 cm wide, but only 26,5 cm long (instead of 28 cm which seemed to be the norm)
As for the steel ring, you are also right, there is none. Would it be common to find caps with slighlty different measurements than those dictated by the regulations? -- Maybe this is necesary to achieve the famous "same plane" shape.

On the one hand the measurements depended on the size of the cap - I would guess yours is one of the smaller ones (size 55/56?) - on the other hand many makers (or those who ordered these caps) didn't care too much about regulations. I don't own too many original caps but one of them, a size 55, has a top panel which is only 23 m wide and 26,5 cm long, the front seam is 8 cm, the ones at the sides 4,5 and the one at the back 5 cm which produces one of the Mt Everest like peaks. Every firm/every maker had his own templates, nothing was standardized (as in the DDR where all caps looked alike) and thus there were thousands of different shapes, some elegant, some flat. Unless one disassembles the caps (which only a fool would do) one will never know how they did it. There were different methods to make these templates (as shown in the cap making thread) but, as said, it was every maker's secret. As the old Meister have long since died (and the only remaining textbook I know of, Hempe's manual, "only" covers the production of regulation caps) I have little hope that anybody can recreate this old art, although Leo has achieved great successes with the revival of the "Stahlbügelverfahren" for making templates which lead to very elegantly shaped caps.
There is an article in UM (shown by F.-B. some time ago) from 1937 which proves that non-regulation caps were, although actually forbidden, made and sold because they were in high demand as they were more elegant than the regulation ones.
Interestingly enough what once was forbidden became the norm later ("Wehrmachtsschnitt"). Perhaps the pressure on the regulations became too high.

[Leonidas]

The shape is great. The road was long, but it leads to success! You can see that!
Good job ErWeSa!