Help!!! Strange Oakleafs. 1957 or fakes?

[Peter Wiking]

Please have a look at these oaks. Are they 1957 oaks, or are they fake castings? I have on the scanns pointed out my areas of conserns. The set weights 5.4 grams and the back is flat. I have never seen flat oaks before.

Thanks.
Peter Wiking

[Peter Wiking]

Back:

[Harry]

Poor castings, I'd say a copy and a badly done one at that. Even the '57 sets show better quality than this.

[Peter Wiking]

Poor castings, I'd say a copy and a badly done one at that. Even the '57 sets show better quality than this.

Thanks Harry. It confirms what i think about these oaks. I will return it.

Cheers.
Peter Wiking

[Henri S]

I agree that it looks like a bad casting copy.

[Harry]

Peter,
If you look at Kai Winkler's site at the moment there are a few sets of oaks by different makers. It is useful as a reference at least to see some pics of genuine sets. To buy them is outragously expensive but it is free to look!

[Ludwig]

-

No good!

[Peter Wiking]

Thanks all.

Cheers.
Peter Wiking

[phaleranumismatics]

It was made on the old centrifugal jewelry casting machine, most probably on the Romanoff in the USA or a Horbach in Europe. By the way the solder is applied on the back I can tell that it was made by a professional jeweler. Fortunately whoever made it didn't have the right equipment such as vacuum casting machine, high capacity wax burning oven, compressor operated wax injector and a powerful investment flask vacuum.
Nor did he have a clear silicon to make the proper mold. The back is flat because this copy was made from an original or a copy that wasn't his. Even if he had un-shrinkable ( regular would shrink 12%) Castaldo mold rubber he still couldn't make a mold because it would damage the original. The spur had to be soldered to the original. Plus the mold press operates at 375 degrees and a silver original would turn ugly brown - black. Since he can't polish it, the only way to bring the color back is to acid strip it. Then it had to be frosted again which with his equipment would result in something that would for many decades look like it was made yesterday.
Without clear silicon the only option left was taking the front impression on the self hardening mold paste. That's why it has a flat back.
Since the wax injector operates precise only when air compressor operated and the mold has two closed parts the hot wax had to be poured manually on to the mold. Manually it can't be done without air getting trapped and when the wax got cold the tiny cracks originated where the last drops went. Those are the marks you see on the back.
The blob (the right one) on the front is a result of the vacuum pump not being powerful enough to suck out all the air pockets left in the flask after dental investment was poured over a wax tree. The burning oven was definitely not programmer controlled but the flask was taken out exactly at the right temperature (otherwise there would have been porosity all over the cluster)
The blob on the left occurred when air got trapped on the centrifugal casting machine. The air pocket this big would have been sucked out by any vacuum pump .
And the light patina you see was applied by sticking the cluster in jewelry oxidizer called Black Silver and the placing it for 10 seconds into the ultrasonic cleaner.

[Peter Wiking]

Thanks. That is interesting info.
Are they using the same method on faked Infantry and Panzer badges to?

Cheers.
Peter Wiking

[phaleranumismatics]

They probably do.
It is not easy though. I'd say regardlles of how skilled the jeweler is it will be more cost efficient to pay couple thousand for the press dies than to try casting it.
No matter what you do the final weight will not be same. Even on the production line when the same conventional rubber mold used to make wax patterns for all pieces on the tree, the final product will have weight variations up to a gram.
In todays market there is only one way to make a cast copy which will completely undetectable from an original . Wax build up machine equiped with 3D laser scanner , overlay monitor , electronic micron microscope and whole bunch other expensive accessories which were originaly designed for semiconductor industry. That is $400,000 equipment and it will give final product with 100% exact measurements under 100x magnification .
Fortunately those machines were not available 2 -3 years ago and today they not used to make something that leaves only few hundred bucks in profit.