This might interest some of you: Beer and Nimmergut have published a book about the making of EK second class with many photos from the production site of Deschler/Munich (Beer/Nimmergut, Die Deschler Fotos, 2013). German language with summaries in English. I bought it here: http://www.pastbuy.net
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This is a very informative book to have, especially if you are interested in knowing the step-by-step production of the iron crosses. Even if you're only interested in the RK production which is almost of the same process, this book will show you photos from the designing by the artist on paper of the intended or planned iron crosses design, the raw material of the frame which is Alpaca in a sheet from, the engraving of the working die which consists of both negative on the bottom of the press machine and the positive on top, even the process of spray painting the core which they use a metal mask in the form of an iron cross to protect the frame. The book is just full of photos with german captions on the bottom. It shows you also the last owner of the Deschler firm, Gustav Kainz who was also an Ostkaempfer who continued the production of various division insignia for the US occupational forces and other medals and badges as early as June 1945 (!) in the undamaged annex next to the bombed out Deschler's main building.
My only gripe about the book is that they have so much empty spaces between the only medium size photos which can be easily enlarged to cover the full length of the page, and the captions below!
I read they also might be currently working on another set on the Deschler's firm on the topic of the Gold Party Badges.
PS: They also accept Paypal BTW.
PSS: RE: artist design/rendering. There's a page, p.54, that shows the artist rendering, accompanied by a measurement annotation, of a round ''3'' EK1 which the authors noted as a rare variety (and a quick check on: http://www.ek1-dna.de/round-3---runde-3.php did show that Deschler did indeed produce the round ''3'' variety (how nice is this!) which I'd probably speculate that this rendering would probably be submitted to the die master who would in turn follow the artist's design to engrave the mother dies. So, if this assumption were correct, artist renderings on sales catalogues would lend as much credibility as the photographic counterpart IMHO.Last edited by sdesember; 03-15-2014, 08:47 AM.
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