Helmcollector, I know what a black light is. What I mean is, several people, using several different lamps (various manufacturers and qualities), would not give reliable test results - thus, no control.
My apologies if I didn’t make that clear.
Helmcollector, I know what a black light is. What I mean is, several people, using several different lamps (various manufacturers and qualities), would not give reliable test results - thus, no control.
My apologies if I didn’t make that clear.
Thanks a lot, 'martin3'....according to what i have read here there is at least some truth in my story, but I am fully aware of the fact that there will never be a simple test that places a decall in the category real or fake...
Kohima, you could buy a 'wood lamp' from a supplier of medical instruments when you want to be sure of the quality and use this as the 'standard' UV light. I think around 80 euro.
The name wood lamp confused me, but I understand Wood is the brand. High quality and good reviews I see.
For years I use a good quality money detector, because at the supermarket where my wife used to work they thought the things were all broken and I offered to check what was wrong with these.
Nothing was wrong, patience was the problem. Tube light with starters take a little time start up. So I 'fixed' about 20 of these units and the happy manager let me keep one.
What is good about these units it that the TL is installed in it's own dark room, so the effect is much clearer than your average hand held lamp from Ali. Of course it is a power cable fed static station and therefore useless at fairs.
I have seen several cheap pocket and larger hand helds from the big websites, but first check the reviews thoroughly before buying. Many of these produce too faint light to be of any use in broad daylight at fairs, etc. That won't be the problem with a medical grade lamp I think, so Wood seems to be a good choice.
I recommend this plus a good magnifier preferably before, but also after, any purchase. It's small and will fit in your pocket. The dealers normally don't like it when you pull it out, guess why....
They call it a 'woodlamp' if it is used in a medical context. Mine comes from a Belgian dealer that sells all sorts of medical instruments to vets and has a very good reputation. I never used it in broad daylight, but now that I checked the decalls again in daylight, even then the difference is quite obvious. Now I see it comes from China...
To really see if a blacklight can help you you would need to treat it as a scientific project and start by defining a baseline or multiple baselines even.
How many examples will be needed to get an accurate test result ?
100 helmets , 1000 helmets ? Spread across the different models ?
As there different decals applied in different factories they would also need to be included.
And then our friend the Pocher decal which was not factory applied would have the be looked at separately as well.
Such a project can not be undertaken by 1 person as contamination of the samples (fakes) would need to be avoided also such research needs to be open and transparent if you want the collector community to accept the results.
That is how the XRF project went wrong. (XRF is an expensive ray gun that can tell you the components decals or paint is made off). The team that launched the XRF project did it wrong from the start and with the wrong intentions (they wanted to monetize it and be the sole authentication company for decals).
1st of all the helmets samples they used to determine good or bad were not available to the public , you did not know who validated the original decals so basically they told you our gun can tell you a decal is good or fake and the community had to swallow it. Of course they got a lot of response to that because here was a claim with zero transparency. They asked 200 USD to validate your helmet and with that you got a certificate.
They launched their business model pretty fast to dealers , so you could buy the helmet with or without their XRF certificate. A week after launch we already found helmets with fake decals being sold with XRF certificates.
:-)
Needless to say XRF pretty much blew up after that and the business was disbanded. The project starter has since passed away as well.
Lack of transparency and a bad baseline study killed it. Sorry for the long winded answer , it's just to show that tools can help us a lot but often because the approach is small scale we can't really make too big of assumptions in how useful certain tools are.
In the end the key of it all is knowing , learning and studying your decals. (without tools or maybe a loupe).
I totaly agree with you, Frank ! I did not launch this thraed because I was convinced this would be a simple test that could categorise every decall in good or bad. I asked myself if it was coincidence that this decall reacted under UV light. We simply have not enough data. And I must admit I wish I had your knowledge that you gathered during all those yearsBut not every new idea (and I realise now this idea is not so new) should be rejected at once...
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