Good day, I received the parcel and here are some pictures taken outside in natural light. According to the curator this has been in a display for a long time. Here are more pictures. Thank you again.
More pictures in natural light
Good day, I received the parcel and here are some pictures taken outside in natural light. According to the curator this has been in a display for a long time. Here are more pictures. Thank you again.
I think a " Link pest " has been affecting this specific forum lately.....in laziness to upload photos ...by Tomaz
Tomaz..do the forum a favor and help the members out and post the photos !
Regards Larry
It is not the size of a Collection in History that matters......Its the size of your Passion for it!!- Larry C
One never knows what tree roots push to the surface of what laid buried before the tree was planted - Larry C
“The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.” - Winston Churchill
The mentioned dagger, photos from wwiidaggers.com (Tom Wittmann proprietor)
Thank you Peter for that information. I have always said that I am here to learn and I do most of the day's I visit.
But with the new pictures something concerns me. If you look at the images that I zoomed in on you will see casting flaws. I have circled them in red.
My question is, Would these flaws have passed even the laziest employee's quality check? Could this of not been engraved with oak leaves due to it being an inferior produced guard?
I just think of the seller or buyer of this dagger at that period. Would I sell it to an officer and then if I was the officer would I buy it.
Could this dagger be a put together piece using inferior parts just after the war to sell to a GI's?
It having or not having oak leave would not have been noticed by a GI. He would just know he got a Luftwaffy dagger to take home.
Now this is all speculation like the other reasons for it's originality.
But like I had mentioned above, I am here to learn.
Semper Fi
Phil
That flaw when looking at it in person looks and feels like it was caused by being dropped and it hit something. This dagger looks like it's been handled quite a bit.
Thanks hylnder. I was going to ask for more pic's of the area. The one on the left of the photo looks like an air bubble hole that travels through the edge to the interior of the lower surface. Is that so?
I have casted lead and pewter figurines and have had some issues that looked similar to these.
I personally hope that this does turn out for the best for you, but I'm just seeing things that make me question it.
Semper Fi
Phil
Last edited by AZPhil; 08-17-2017 at 04:38 AM.
Hi Phil,
well you have very good sharp eyes, that is amazing you noticed these casting flaws! Ok, first you have to realize, that Luftwaffe daggers were not subject of RZM inspection, so the quality of them is sometimes quite lower, especialy in the end of production time. I saw a lot of 2nd. model Luftwaffe daggers with several flaws on them, which were very serious and you can noticed them at the first look. Now I have in my collection very nice late ware produced dagger made by C. Gustav Spitzer, it is equiped with generic fittings but it will hep us to understan some unique atributes of late war daggers. I´m not at home right now, so I can post only one picture of crossguard. Just look at the sections which are on the orange circles! And thre are also several flaws on pommel - I will post the pictures, when I come home. So despite that flaws on crossguard, dagger is in my opinion authentic.
In conclusion, we meet very ofthen several casting flaws on late and sometimes also on mid period produced daggers. I don´t think that flaws on the dagger, which is the main subject of this thread were so serious when probably NCO purchased this dagger. In my opinion these casting flaws were hide as a buble undere the material. And later bacause of wering in period and also because of long time, when aluminum material become tired, they just showed up...
I also know, that many daggers were asembled afther the war as a suvenirs for soldiers. At the begining all daggers were made from authentic parts, blades and scabbards - these daggers are the same like originals examples, but later producers of this post war daggers were ran out of parts, at the first scabbards and blades, so later they just made own blades and scabbards and put them on authentic fittings - 99% of them were generic type. Later in 1950-1960 Spanish decided to made again extremely nice fakes of these 2nd. model Luftwaffe daggers, and the earlyest of them are great and it is almost imposible to see the difference between the orginals. I have photos of one that early spanish copy, which is very rare. It is interesting to note, that the crossguards from 1960 were made from zinc, never from aluminum and they also have small flaws, which are similar to, I don´t know how to use exact word - to little corosion.
But like I said in prewious post, I never saw, that this type of fittings were faked, or used by fakers. And if they were assembled early afther the war? Who knows... But whole construction of dagger is textbook and typical for late war produced daggers, post war assembled daggers, despite the fact they were made from authentic parts has different type of construction, for example scabbards screws, grip holes for wire etc.
Best regards
Peter
I wonder if that would explain why the original post's dagger is missing the oak leaves on top of the crossguard? Perhaps it was put together from remaining inventory just after wars end to sell as a souvenir, and thus the hand finishing wasn't nearly as necessary?
First off I want to thank you Peter for taking the time to answer these questions I had. I am truly grateful. Thank You!
There was one other thing I did notice when I was zooming in on those pic's. And if you look at this one. There is a hole in the grip where the wire goes in. Am I understanding you correctly with what I quoted, that this is an indication of a post war piece?
Semper Fi
Phil
Hello,
well I have to note, that all of postwar assembled daggers has no factory application - no patina, but they were put together of parts in natural aluminum color. This dagger has proper patination from factory. I still think it is genuine late war produced dagger.
Next to the grip. You have to realize that grips of this dagger were made from warious type of materials and warious construction, so each grip react differently to the light, heat, bad stored conditions etc. For example, som of producers, when put together dagger use direct heat to the grip, then it better fix to the pomel (for example Alcoso). That is why we see so many anomaly on 2nd. model Luftwaffe daggers.
At the begining all producers use orange, or yelow grips wich was made from plastic materials or some kind of bakelite. Nex is celuloid and the last were plaster-filled or wood-cored grips. So early daggers grip fit the pommel great, no holes. But later, plaster-filled or wood cored grips just don´t fit exactly to the pommel. Years ago many collectors put these daggers as a reproduction away, but this anomaly is sometimes see on late war daggers. If you inspect the dagger in hands, you will see that it is not so big hole and you even hardly noticed it. This photo is took from bad angle, so it looks like there is a big space between the grip and pommel.
For better imagination, I attached some pictures of grip types (except ivory and artificial ivory).
Best regards
Peter
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