FLL I.A.B. good or bad?

[Ken S]

I picked this up today at the Nashville show. I think its 100% good and I think there is a lot of finnish hidding under the dirt. I would love to here what you guys think?
all the best
ken s

[Ken S]

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[Ken S]

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[greg.hays]

Wish the pics were a little larger but from what I see it looks like a good one to me....one of my favorite families of IAB's now you only have around 20 more variants to go .

[Ken S]

here it is after I took some soap and hot water and a tooth brush to it.
wow thats got to be 100% finish
all the best
ken

[Ken S]

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[Ken S]

thanks greg, I have no idea how to make bigger pics, I have your email address want me to send you a full sized pic. the badge is in great shape
ken

[greg.hays]

Quite a difference Congrats

Yeah go ahead, I'll try to resize it for you.

[greg.hays]

Reposted after cleaning pics for Ken.......its a pretty one.

[greg.hays]

reverse

[Graeme]

Hi Ken

It has cleaned up nice

nice find
regards
Graeme

[Mark McShane]

Talk about a transformation, well done Ken on picking up a lovely badge and also doing a fabulous cleaning job.

Cheers,

Mark

[Ken S]

thanks guys, I got lucky today, the iab was in a display case with three army daggers, I could tell that it would clean up well so I asked the dealer what he would take for it. he said it was not for sale, only for decoration for his daggers. so as I was walking away, he changed his mind and let it go for a song.. I have a question, I have found that some zinc Iab's clean very well and some do not, my question is this, was any other metal mixed in with the zinc and if so, did the "metal" that was mixed in change as war materal became hard to get?

p.s.
I used cameo cleaner and it works wonders on zinc piece's

[keifer kahn]

Hi Ken,
The zink alloys used in badges always had a percentage of lead in them.
This percentage increased as the war progressed, culminating in Kriegsmetall.
Kriegsmetall,though still suitable for the manufacturing of badges was a poor quality alloy compared with the earlier refined zink alloys.
Kriegsmetall badges are notable for their loss of finish and very dark gray(almost black)colour.They also tend to,in many cases, have a shale like texture to the metal.They also dont clean up as well as badges made from better quality zink alloys.

[Chet Sowersby]

Ken,
A very nice example. Now go find it's bronze brother.

Chet