Soviet 3 Place Labor Medal Bar

[Ralph P]

Desantnik and John - Thanks much for your replies and for the education of filling up my brain bucket.

Dave - I for sure am going to be at the show in Feb. I even started a thread in the show and chapters forum. I quite understand that with practice everything becomes easy...or least that is what they say...

I would for sure be interested in seeing how they are put together from the educational stand point. And it will be good seeing you again...

[NavyFCO]

Here's one that I did for a fellow back in about 1996-7. I bought all of the awards and mounts for him and for the cost of the awards, the mounts, the ribbons and my time I think I charged him $600 for this group. Not a bad price....

[NavyFCO]

Here's a set that the same guy wanted on this one uniform. Kinda nice looking, I admit....

[Ralph P]

Dave - Very nice indeed. And it appears it was somewhat time consuming but worth it...

Here's one that I did for a fellow back in about 1996-7. I bought all of the awards and mounts for him and for the cost of the awards, the mounts, the ribbons and my time I think I charged him $600 for this group. Not a bad price....

[Ralph P]

Yes it is...

Here's a set that the same guy wanted on this one uniform. Kinda nice looking, I admit....

[NavyFCO]

And another, made for the same fellow...

I've got a bunch more photos of groups I did, but I don't think I scanned the photos. These were all made back when digital cameras were large, bulky, 1.3 mega pixels (at best!) and prohibitively expensive. So they're all on regular photos.... somewhere!

Dave

[NavyFCO]

Here's a group that I made up and kept framed in my office. This was a group of my "favorite" awards. I sold it in the late 90s for a whopping $220... God only knows where it is now and who might think it was an actual "real" group.... (sorry!)

I also re-ribboned a lot of legit groups. Back in 2000/2001/2002 I was getting three to four nice groups PER MONTH out of Russia and Ukraine (I could buy all that I had money for, and I often had to pass on groups simply because I ran out of money!) and many of these were smuggled out without the kolodki (the hangers) on the medals. Sometimes the hangers would show up, most of the time they would be kept by the seller. Even when they did show up, sometimes the ribbons would be stripped off of them! So almost all of these had to be remounted. I always tried to wait for the legit hangers, but sometimes they would never show up so I had to replace them with ones that I had in my parts box. So if you wonder why some groups have nice clean ribbons......

Dave

[John F.]

It's not terribly difficult to do... but after doing a few hundred of these, it's not as difficult as it might appear at first.
Dave

But that first one is a pain in the neck.

[Ralph P]

Dave very interesting reading about how medals would arrive to you with or without hangers. I for sure some additional questions to ask you when we see each other on the 4th. Thanks...

Here's a group that I made up and kept framed in my office. This was a group of my "faavorite" awards. I sold it in the late 90s for a whopping $220... God only knows where it is now and who might think it was an actual "real" group.... (sorry!)

I also re-ribboned a lot of legit groups. Back in 2000/2001/2002 I was getting three to four nice groups PER MONTH out of Russia and Ukraine (I could buy all that I had money for, and I often had to pass on groups simply because I ran out of money!) and many of these were smuggled out without the kolodki (the hangers) on the medals. Sometimes the hangers would show up, most of the time they would be kept by the seller. Even when they did show up, sometimes the ribbons would be stripped off of them! So almost all of these had to be remounted. I always tried to wait for the legit hangers, but sometimes they would never show up so I had to replace them with ones that I had in my parts box. So if you wonder why some groups have nice clean ribbons......

Dave

[NavyFCO]

But that first one is a pain in the neck.

Actually, it's a pain in the fingers. I remember after doing the first one I posted that the tips of my fingers were blistered from pulling the ribbons taught while tightening them!

Here's how I do it...

You need a needle-nosed pliers, a small flat head screwdriver, a pair of small straight blade scissors and some good finger strength for your tools.

First, take the multi-place mount, and bend it slightly with the front part bent out. This will make the little fasteners on the reverse of the hanger "pook" out a bit so they're easier to get the ribbons in. If you need to, use the screwdriver to open the fasteners a little bit more in order to get the ribbons in.

Next, take the needle nose pliers and bend outward the little hooks at the bottom of each medal mounting place. Bend them out as this stresses them less than having to bend them in as you don't have to bend them that far. Watch out, as these will break and when they do, you might as well chuck the mount!

Mount the medals on the hooks, and carefully bend the hooks back in so they are flush with the rest of the mount.

Starting with the last medal put one end of the ribbon in the fastener, and then bend the ribbon around, following the path that it should take. At the same time, keep your finger on the part of the ribbon that's going through the fastener to keep it taught.

Once the ribbon has gone all the way around, feed the second end through the fastener (sometimes you'll need to use your screwdriver to push the ribbon through the fastener part) and quickly use the pliers to bend the fastener part flush with the mount (as flush as you can get, of course). Then use your pliers to pull on the ends of the ribbon that went through the fastener in order to get it uniformly taught over the mount.

After ribboning all of the medals, then bend the mount back to straight. At this point, the ribbons will get a little loose, so go back through them with the pliers pulling on the ends of the ribbon in order to get them taught again. Take a pair of scissors (I used a small stainless medical pair) to trim off the excess ribbon on the backside of the mounts.

And that's that!

Dave

[NavyFCO]

Dave very interesting reading about how medals would arrive to you with or without hangers.

Here's a picture of how I would get groups. This was from a box that arrived to me in June 2003. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any photos of how all the medals originally came... the medals were wrapped in a sort of rubber tape, with the medals from each ziploc baggy (I put them in the ziplocs) taped together with the group's name on them on the small white pieces of paper. So here was a box with the screwback awards mounted on the pieces of cardboard, and all of the medals wrapped up in rubber tape four and five medals per "block". It was always a lot of fun to get boxes like this. Interestingly, of the four remaining Soviet groups I have in my collection, two of them are pictured here from the same box!

Dave

[NavyFCO]

Here's another group, straight out of the box with the medals unwrapped... This one was one where the kolodki came about a month later. Other groups (like the ones photoed above) were not so lucky.

Unfortunately, the days of getting groups like this on a regular basis are long gone... those were truly the "glory days" of Soviet awards collecting....

Dave

[John F.]

Hi Dave,

Where did that watch go in the order of precedence... before or after the Order of the Red Banner?

John

[NavyFCO]

Hi Dave,

Where did that watch go in the order of precedence... before or after the Order of the Red Banner?

John

It was actually converted from screwback to hanging in accordance with the 1943 regulations and followed the Order "For Excellence in Service in Administrative Duties 3rd Class" After the war it was re-converted back to it's original screwback state.

Dave

[Ralph P]

Dave - You are right those days must have been truely glorious and interesting from the stand point of getting a shipment in then spending the hours researching the medals before grouping them.

Also thanks for the block of instruction...

John I am glad you asked first about the order of precedence of the watch.