The mysterious "H" IAB

[Philippe DB]

Hi Guys,

Heres is another strange IAB I wanted to share with you. As soon as they are hollow, or should I say hollow and then kind of filled up again, these badges draw my attention. We know this technique from eg, APB's, AS in track PAB's and early RK GAB's but I simply can't figure out the how and the why of this production technique.

When I bought this badge I thought it would be a piece of cake to link it to a maker once I got it in my hands. From the pics I had my best guess was GWL but as soon as the little bugger arrived it became evident that although close to GWL there were to many differences.

I searched untill my eyes hurt to mach this IAB to something known an finally I got lucky. It's a perfect match to the one of a kind hollow zinc mysterious "H" marked IAB in my files (forgot to put a name next to the pic so I hope the current owner won't mind me posting it here).

Now for my question could you all please take a look at your IAB's to see if there are any more variants (buntmetall hollow, solid zinc...) of this unknown "H" maker arround. If there are maybe the use of the hardware on these badges might bring us closer by figuring out who the maker of these IAB's was.

KR
Philippe

[Philippe DB]

reverse

[Philippe DB]

And here is the hollow zinc "H" marked badge from one of our members

[Philippe DB]

reverse "H"

[Philippe DB]

Maker mark

[stefan133]

@ phillipe

looks like mine

greets

[Philippe DB]

Hi Stefan,

Yep had yours in my files and remember I told you some time ago that I thought it was GWL. Well by now I figured out that that was wrong. IMO this is a very uncommon IAB and I really don't expect to see many of them pop up in this thread but lets wait and see

KR
Philippe

[Bruce Simcox]

Hi Philippe......

......wouldn't these fall into the die cast category concerning method of manufacture?

-------------------------

Bruce

[Philippe DB]

More than likely Bruce.

Somekind of experimental casting process?

Apart from the APB's where this seems to be common all the other badges featuring this kind of reverse I know are very uncommon, which would lead me to believe that they for what ever reason were only produced for a very short periode of time.

I think apart from the badges I mentioned above we could add the L/53 IAB and the semi hollow JFS to this same category.

One of the last threads I ever was able to read on the *** forum was about such a semi hollow JFS sold by Detlev. On that forum they put the badge in the "Detlev blunder book" stating that it was a fake, which IMO is completely wrong, simply because by now we found more than enough evidence that this technique was used by several makers.

KR
Philippe

[Philippe DB]

Hi Guys,


For those of you who are interested, take a look at post 11 in this thread, the missing solid zinc family member of this uncommon IAB

http://www.wehrmacht-awards.net/foru...ad.php?t=93292

So one more to go the hollow buntmetall "H" IAB

KR
Philippe

[skip]

I think these "half hollow" badges were made in what the germans call "Schleudergüßverfahren". (spelling?) or spin casting

That means the molten metal was poured into the form and then spun around. Centrifugal force then pushed the metal into the crevices of the mould. That would leave the semi hollow reverse like you see on these badges.

I think you can see this effect to some extent on the numbered PABs as well.

Skip

[Philippe DB]

Hi Skip,


Thanks for the info, tried to image this process but my head al of a sudden started to spin.

Does your source know if this is a technique that is still in use today?

Why didn't anybody ever thought of writing a book on different badge/medal production processes, with nice pictures were you can follow the complete production process beginning with the raw material up to the finished product.

KR
Philippe

[Frank Heukemes]

Dear Philippe,

I am sure many have thought of that and I also wanted to include such a "diary of a badge" from start to finish in my GAB book. It is just very hard, or better: almost impossible to get hold of old photographs documenting this. I hoped to get something out of the archives of former makers, with no luck yet. They either do not have anything, or do not want to contribute. For all the reason I told about in the Frank & Reif thread.
If anybody here should have such production photos, please contact me, I am desperately looking for some.