Gordon Williamson

Very interesting variant Dick.

Even if they don't look very refined, I would take an embroidered version over a woven one any day. Never seen a woven one that I would trust 100%. Even if one looked good, passed the usual burn tests etc, I wouldn't very feel completely happy with it.

I have one of these, but to me, its a postwar piece. (Fortunately I was given it by a friend so I have no money invested in it)

Its a Zinc one. The retaining clip on Tombak examples is soldered directly to the badge. On Zinc pieces it is soldered to a small metal disc which is then affixed to the badge. Soldering a narrow clip to the Zink would result in a very weak joint. The bigger surface area of the disc makes for a stronger joint.

Nice original example of the type generally attributed to Juncker of Berlin.

Firstly, welcome to GMIC, and your English is very good !

I would agree the emedals price is high considering its poor condition.

Hard to say about your badge without a photo to see its condition, but you can generally pick a Bronze grade clasp up in nice condition for around Euro 400-450. These are not especially rare badges.

The price would drop based on how poor the condition is.

Okay, I've sat some of the assemblies onto the unfinished deck just to show the proportions etc.

She is now sitting in her block of styrene foam. This far from the finished product - stained and varnished wood edging will cover the currently blackened (because I got fed up looking at the white foam) sides of this foam block and a proper name plate added. The first stage of the "sea" has been sculpted but a lot more work on this to do yet. Haven't decided whether to just give the "water" heavy coats of gloss varinsh or to use a thin layer of clear resin, probably the latter.

Again the hull is just primed and will need to be sprayed in the correct colour with the appropriate "camouflage" . I'm almost certainly going to go with her final scheme where the black/white stripes of the "Baltic" scheme were painted out, leaving just the darker grey "false bow" and "false stern".

I want to finish the base and hull fairly soon, and add the main decking so I will have a completed and finished "body" to fit the various assemblies to. The edges of the hull are already marked for the tiny holes to be drilled to take the railing stanchions.

The German release is several months ahead of the UK so I'be been following that on-line and knowing what comes next it looks like the last few issues are the myriad of small deck fittings which festoon any lasrge warship. At least in 1/200 they won't need extra fine tweesers and mangifying glasses to handle !

Rangefinders under construction. Still to be primed and the mattress antenna to be added to one of them.

Plastic kit equivalent.

Sure.

Lots of fiddly little sub-assemblies. recently. The basic turrets for main and secondary armament now just about complete, but still with the detailing to be added. Ships boats have arrived, but not assembled yet. Lovely little models in their own right.

The frustrating thing with these part works is that you can only build them in the order they release the parts, so you have lots of part-finished sub-assemblies awating the final few components.

Decking has arrived. Beautifully printed, wafer thin wood.

Here are the aircraft hangars, assembled and primed but still with some finishing work to do ( gap filling etc- wooden parts don't quite fit as flawlessly as injection moulded plastic !)

Again, this is only primer paint, but its quite near the real colour. The final coat with then have some shading and highlighting added to accentuate the detail, but you can see the level of detail than can be achieved in 1/200 compared with the 1/350 plastic kit equivalent !

Wilhelm Kophamel wasn't the name of a ship, its the maker of the clock. There were several clock makers in Kiel. I've seen others by Kophamel.

I should also just mention that as well as having the feet added, it has been over-enthusiastically polished. The dial would originally have had a matt silvered finish with black point inlaid into the numerals etc. The casing, like the Kriegsmarine equivalents would originally have had been black painted. The removal of the black painted finish is very common as once their shipboard life was over, many people through whose hands these passed would have preferred the look of a brass rather than black ships clock. These things all effect its value and the pieces that I saw go through auction were in working order and superb condition.

Nevertheless you have a lovely clock and if you got it at a jumble sale, I guess you probably got it at a very attractive price that would make most of us very jealous !

Kaiserliche Marine clock similar in style to the Kieninger & Obergfell clock for the Kriegsmarine.

Very nice indeed but I suspect it has been altered by the addition of "feet" so that it can stand on a desk or shelf. Never seen that style before but it does look like it started life as a bulkhead clock, though I'm the first to admit I don't know much about Imperial Navy Clocks.

There was an auction sale in Edinburgh a year or two back of Imperial navy brass "bulkhead" clocks which were reputed to have been removed from some of the ships at Scapa Flow before they were scuttled, and although they didn't make the same sort of prices I've seen Kriegsmarine ones go for they still got very respectable prices ( I seem to remember them being around ?800-?1000)

You are correct on MV

BMB = Besondere Marine-Bestimmungen

NTB = Nordsee Tages Befehl

OTB = Ostsee Tages Befehl

RGB = Reichs Gesetz Blatt

OTB and NTB are simply the "Orders of the Day" for the North Sea and Baltic commands. RGB was the national legal gazette by which various laws were promulgated, and the BMB are Special Naval Regulations.

Is the top a removable one. If so its probably just a case of a top from one maker being added to a body from another.

I'm afraid the value of these is pretty low. You can buy a white top Bundesmarine sailors cap on EBay for around ?10. Allowing for it being an earlier blue top version, you can probably double that price but it's still a fairly low value item.

Postwar sailors cap for the Bundesmarine. Fairly early as they have only used white tops for the sailors cap for many years now.

The term "geschwader" and the use of block letters is an immediate indicator of a post-WW2 tally ribbon.

Yes, one of the better quality fakes, but still easy enought to identify if you know what to look for. Another indicator is that original Schwerin pieces have the wing root on one side solid ( the area around the eagle's beak). Easiest seen from the reverse. Even this isn't fool proof though as some copies have corrected this feature.

With good originals of this badge now selling for anything between $1200 and $2000 if in somewhere between very good to minty condition, buying a fake can be a very expensive mistake.

The Angolia Kriegsmarine set is very hard to find now. It won't help you too much on badges as coverage of them is limited. It is more of a uniforms study.

"Die Auszeichnungen der Kriegsmarine" is excellent but long out of print and very expensive if you can find one. However, it covers everything the KM soldier could earn so also has things like the Long Service Awards, Iron Crosses, War Merit Crosses etc and doesn't go into great detail on the various makers. Photos of the badges aren't too big either and only in black and white. Nevertheless a superb book.

My new book on Kriegsmarine badges should be out later this year. With the generous assistance of several members from GMIC and GCA, we have assembled over 1000 photos showing mutli-angle shots of all the accepted manufacturers examples of each badge and a good range of the so far unidentified, unmarked specimens plus awards documents, wartime photos of the badges being worn etc.

But ------if you rotate the photo to the correct position, isn't that the tip of a normal vertical mounted pin sticking out at the bottom ?

Very interesting. I have also seen a Souval HSK with the ship silvered and a further, unmarked, specimen.

I used to think these were simply messed-with examples but now I'm not so sure, or at least think if they were messed with, it could have been during the period.

Yours certainly looks as if the silvered finish was a deliberate feature created during manfacture.

hi gordon

im very interested on second volume about km cap tallies,do you know anything about it for buying?

regards from spain

fernando

I think work on the book is still in progress. Not sure when it will be available to buy but one of the authors is a member here so I am sure we will find out when it is printed.

after

Here are the before and after shots

Super cap Michel. I like these examples with the soft leather peak !

Very rare and interesting variant of this document !

It is interesting that the time is pre-printed as 1 1/2 years. The other type with the image of the award at the top has a space for the length of time to be typewritten and one I have seen has just "ein" inserted.

So, it seems the length of time to earn this award could vary.

Top of the ball mount for the ribbon loop on a Sacred Treasure 3rd Class.

"M" on a Sacred Treasure

Another 14-15 War Medal

Nice original tallies. One of the few areas still remaining where you can assemble a decent collection without having to spend vast amounts of cash !