Details About SMF Reproduction Gravity Knife For New Collectors

[Wolk]

And here is the replica of Weyersberg

[everittcc]

Thanks for posting those. They're really well done, very hard to tell from an original. Would nice to get a hold of one to study it. The pins used in the end cap look like a different metal than the end cap itself. I've seen repairs where the individual doing the repair use pins made of metal other than stainless steel. The main pin material used in repairs to replace the pins in the end cap seems to be nickel. I continue to hear that the non-take down end caps are nickel or chrome plated, which they're not.

[gerrit]

Scary stuff...even this repro the Kings nose is pointed.

To my eyes this makermark is pretty well executed but not that hard to determen as a copy, it has that stamped look its laser cut on a non crossgrain blade.
The blades collectors know that now a days all that has value is being reproduced with modern technics making pretty good copies.
All you can do is being more knowledgeable then the forgers, and as sad as it is, post like these only point out the flaws in their forgers process.
The will read up in the end and make better copies, i have seen that before.

Like the Eickhorn quality tags, the market gets flooded with these high quality copies, for the ones who have an original its possible to indentify a modern fake, for others its hard!

Ger

[Wolk]

I'm pretty sure that people who make these high quality copies are well aware of the flaws, regardless of what we post here.
They usually base their designs on originals so they have to own originals to make good copies.

I would even say that not posting copies is way worse, because raising awarness helps people to not get scammed.
If you dont point out what to look for, people cant learn.

[JRMeda]

Greeting Chris,
And welcome to this site. In just glancing at your tutorial, respectfully I believe the SMF maker marked blade which you show with the king logo as your period example, is actually a post war replacement, which possibly was inserted into a period Type II body assembly. The reason I say this, while there were some trademarked blades initially used for Weyersbergs that came out when the Type II knives went into production, SMF never did used their seated king logo on the blades of their 2nd type production knives.

JR

[Anderson]

Interesting post Chris. You highlight a growing problem for the hobby. Rising prices make it worthwhile for fraudsters to invest in the tooling to produce more accurate looking fakes. To remain safe in this minefield means a collector has to study and study until as Ger mentions, you can visually recognize the errors. A complication that JR points out is with numerous component parts earlier owners of a broken or incomplete example may have added authentic or reproduction parts. Something to watch for.

[Wolk]

Here are some closeups of original logos from war period SMF knifes. Some details may slighty vary but in general most of them are the same.
I'm not sure if there is any other variation not shown below.

[guto]

i have a question about the blade, is it possible that a period blade has no markings at all?