Heer Wachmantel

[Gordon Craig]

Gentlemen,

I owe Gene T a vote of thanks for helping me add one of these coats to my collection. It is the teddy futter type but is missing the hood. Gene T tried moving the hood from the cloth lined coat to this one but the buttons are in a different location so that could not be done. The buttons on the front closure are large and are marked 25 mm on the back. They actually measure closer to 24 mm. The slit in the back is closed with 4 dark coloured plastic buttons. There are shoulder board loops on the shoulders but no buttons ever seem to have been attached. There is a paper label stapled to the edge of the collar which is marked Nsch. Kp. 120. The pictures show what happens to the pleather covered shoulders with time.
There is a half belt inside the coat that does not seem to serve any purpose. Does anyone know why it is there?
Regards,

Gordon

[Gordon Craig]

#2,

[Gordon Craig]

#3,

[Gordon Craig]

#4,

[Asbjoern]

As I see the cracked artificial leather on this coat ... never ever give this type of coat to the dry cleaner! Every other kind of early BW stuff returned in good shape (...for sure I did experimental cleanings with demaged stuff...) and not even hand written labels were destroyed. But this aritficial leather looses all its softeners and crackes emediately afterwards! I had to clean my coat with the teddy lining as it caught some dirt not removable by brushing etc and now it is more or less looks like the one above ...

Jens

[Collectinsteve]

I stood outside in sub zero Fahrenheit temperatures and was toasty warm! Plus, the pockets are big enough to hold a whole bottle of Schnapps, so that helps too

I have both versions and I really like the teddy type. In fact, I am totally in love with the teddy liners on any BW item. Such a shame they moved away from it to the quilted nylon. It's not the same!

Sorry to hear about your disaster Jens. There is a product marketed in the US called "Dryel"

http://www.amazon.com/Dryel-At-Home-.../dp/B00BISQHRI

I do not know if there is an equivalent in Europe. The product consists of a bag and a chemical packet. You put the item to be cleaned inside the bag with the chemical packet. You put it in your dryer and tumble it for a period of time (I forget what). I can say it works very well. I've used it on BW and Polizei wool items. However, it does have a problem with bad stains and body oder, but I think there's extra cleaning kits for those problems.

Steve

[Gene T]

There is a half belt inside the coat that does not seem to serve any purpose. Does anyone know why it is there?

Glad the coat made its way to you without sustaining any additional battle damage, Gordon!

The internal strap is supposed to button to the lowest button hole on the right side flap when the coat is worn closed, so that the flap doesn't droop. It is a feature found on many double-breasted coats and jackets.

The presence of numerous surface cracks notwithstanding, the pleather on this Teddy coat is actually noticeably softer and more resilient than the cardboard-stiff kind found on the cloth-lined coats in the same batch. As Jens already suggested, once the plasticizers leach out of vinyl, there is really no home-brew remedy capable of putting them back in. That said, I read on a motorcycle forum that people have had some success "softening" hardened vinyl seat covers using Avon's "Skin So Soft" lotion, which is mineral oil-based. I don't know of any Avon lady nearby, so I bought some mineral oil from Home Depot and tested it on parts of the shoulder cover. After the oiliness subsided, I really couldn't tell any difference between the treated parts and the untreated parts. Obviously, the vinyl used to make motorcycle seat cover is quite different from the kind used here; which might account for the disparity in results. At the very least, nothing fell apart or got worse after the treatment, and the material did seem to have absorbed the oil over several days, so it's not a total disaster yet!

About that unit inventory tag - every single coat I examined at the store sported the same tag, so they all came from Panzerbrigade 12. According to this wiki article (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzerbrigade_12), this supply company took on its designation in 1975, suggesting that these coats may have been in use through the mid '70s, or else they were inventoried and tagged at that time and put back into permanent storage.

Lastly, you may want to put a few stitches on the collar hook to keep it from falling off. I'd have done it for you, but I was trying to get the coat out to you as quickly as possible.


cheers,

Gene

[Gordon Craig]

Gene,

Thanks for adding to the thread. I researched the unit as well and I suppose that the coats would have been held at a place available for them to be issued to the Panzer div when they were required. They certainly would not have been an individual issue.

Regards,

Gordon

[Collectinsteve]

Gordon,

Once you use the strap as Gene described you'll know why it's such a good feature. If you don't instantly feel the difference, goose step around the house a bit and you'll definitely notice a difference

Gene,

I've had a few of these and the one I have that has intact, supple, pleather is distinctly different than the other one I have that's all cracked to hell. It is probable that there is quite a variety of contractors involved in proving the pleather and some were better made than others. It's the sort of thing where chemical balance and manufacturing conditions probably makes a huge difference.

BTW, I had a friend with a Communist era Polish pleather type map case who left it in his wardrobe with other militaria items. He is in a tropical environment and some time later he smelled something coming from the wardrobe. He opened it and found that the map case had disintegrated into a liquid and the highly toxic liquid ate through several uniforms. IIRC he almost passed out from the chemicals.

Steve