Wonderful and exciting discoveries!!! This looks very promising as an effective weapon against the "industrial fake machine". Finally, a weapon that we may use to fight them!
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When you go home
Tell them for us and say
For your tomorrow
We gave our today
--Inscription in the 5th Marine Division cemetery,
Iwo Jima 1945 -
What Rick said is correct and important. It is a MINIMUM silver requirement.Comment
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Tom:
I am not a medal collector (mainly due to the fakes) but I certainly applaud your efforts on this front. The hobby could stand many more people like yourself.
I do have one question though (being asked from ignorance, so please bear with me). As the minute details can now be known about the composition of various components of an original medal, is it possible that someone could use this information to create the "perfect" fake? By this, I mean one that conforms to originals at the elemental level? I would imagine that, if this could be done, it would likely be cost prohibitive but I'm wondering about the possibility vs. feasibility.
Thanks much for sharing your findings. Absolutely fascinating!
Regards,
DrewComment
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Tom,
Again, excellent research. Like most good research this opens up more questions than it answers and creates further avenues of research. You have answered some of my questions which I appreciate. I think Drew has a good point. The question will be how much is a faker willing to spend on R&D to duplicate these alloys.
Others probably know the answers to this but I would not think every manufacturer had their own foundry so would get raw materiqals from a supplier. If so how many were there and who did they supply? Did they survive the war and supply the same alloys after the war? Can we "finger print" a manufacturer this way to answer questions about who may have made unmarked awards (round three EK comes to mind)? Are there indeed post war RK's with pre'45 frames out there?
The idea of extending this to all badges is a great one. That would be an invaluable data base. I agree with whoever said it already-there is a book in the making here. I do notice thta the numbers vary slightly from different areas tested which one would expect. How many areas do you think you need to sample and how many crosses from a single maqnufacturer do you need to sample to develope a good range of probability from these variences?
I am sure you reqalize that you now have the ability to create a COA that will be second to none, that will over shadow and other dealer's COA, any vet stories and could lay to rest just about any "provenance" issues. It would also be a nice little business. I think in the future if I were to spend 10K on an RK I'm going to want to see some SEM data on the piece first. Especially if it is from someone I don't know.
Luftwaffe tank badges, ballon badges, numbered Luftwaffe badges-this technique will lay a lot of arguements to rest once and for all. It is too bad Bill Stump didn't live to see this. I think he would have loved it.
Regards,
MikeComment
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Excellent work Tom!
Your name will go down in the history-books.
AnttiComment
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great job, well done, i m speechless.
AlexComment
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Well Done Tom!
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thanks guys!
Rick- that is interesting that the law did state a "minimum" of a certain silver content. I really did not expect to see higher than 80% silver and found that very exciting.
Drew- It is nearly impossible to fake something down to the exact elemental proportion and have the impurities present. This technique is used to detect fake paints in fake masterpieces where the fakers know the exact composition of old paint, have tried to reproduce it, and have failed. Let the fakers know everything, as they cannot fake effectively to this level!
Mike- I do not think we will be able to "fingerprint" an individual maker for unknown badges unless one maker used some oddball paint or metal that no one else was using. We will see. There MAY be some makers that used a particular supplier of paint or metal that may have some hallmarks that can be used to identify them, but I think mostly we will be able to tell period pieces vs modern fakes. Who knows, we may be suprised and find that the rounder has period materials, or that the 3/4 ring RK has trace elements identical to traces in another known maker. It will be fun, as this opens a whole new vista of analysis.Comment
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Very interesting studyp
oint 2 is very normal. It is just a question of measurment and site of it. Crystal growing create some segregation, just basis metallurgy
I'll test all the crosses I have soon...
2. Also, does anyone else find the % of silver in the RK frame higher than 80% interesting?
3. What about the fact that the EK2s are both silver plated and have neusilber beneath? Were most EK2s silver plated or made of just neusilber?[/QUOTE]Comment
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That is a good point Phillipe-
An alloy is more like a "stew" than a uniform "soup", with small areas of higher concentration of one metal, depending on the point ananlyzed. At the exposed areas of silver we could find, however, the silver content was greater than 90%, with the exception of the rhodium coating, where the alloy has a lower silver content. This, however, was the plating and not the base metal.
As an FYI for anyone planning on doing this, here are a few things to keep in mind.
1. Clean the medal with a mild soap and distilled water and rinse the medal throughly with distilled water. Dry- obviously
2. Use cotton photography gloves to handle the medal after cleaning, otherwise any material (salt) from your hands will show up on analysis and the whole study will be ruined due to contamination.
3. Seal the medal in a zip lock plastic bag for transport
4. Handle the medal during analysis with cotton/nylon photography gloves
5. Plan which areas you want to analyze prior to the study
6. Be prepared to have to perform a micro "scrape" at an edge of the medal to expose base metal if there is a coating. This cannot even be seen with the naked eye
7. Think about a good standard with which to compare. Two standards would be better.
Perhaps when we get accumulated data, we can pool this and use this data for excellent standards.Last edited by tom hansen; 01-05-2005, 09:08 AM.Comment
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ALL NEW YORK AREA RK OWNERS:
I am working on getting time on a SEM at Brooklyn polytech. If you are interrested in joining me to test your RK and to "deepen" the pool, please e-mail me:
marc@garlasco.com
I will let you all know if I get this set up. I have NO IDEA what their availability is at this point. I will also test war badges and would hope to have some fakes to test.
Tom - how much time will I need per piece???
MarcComment
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Marc- It took us 3 hours on the machine to analyze what we wanted on four pieces. We had about an hour of talking about what we wanted to do, so you could probably tell them up front and save some time. It was slow, as we did not know what we were looking for. To very accurartely evaluate one piece would take 30 minutes. I think further tests will be quicker, as I will know more of what to look for. Make sure to clean the medals, handle with gloves only, and to place them in a sealed zip lock bag to avoid contamination. Let us all know when you get time!Comment
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Awesome .......Job well done
IanComment
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Yes, this is truly a great step forward in the hobby!
(Now, let's get some controversial pieces checked!
)
GeorgeComment
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Picture me with a pitchfork and torch shouting ROUNDER ROUNDER ROUNDER. Now that's controversial
You guys should check out this old thread that the engineer was reading above;
http://dev.wehrmacht-awards.com/foru...hlight=rhodium
Very enlightening. And yes the truth was revealed...Comment
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