Uboat Schickle

[paul w]

Schickle u boat

Thanks for those replies Norm and John. This has been a very informative discussion and your database of photos and details on these badges Norm is hugely impressive. I now get the argument about the weights Norm so thanks for persevering. I guess at the end of the day its what each individual is comfortable with and I would still have that niggling doubt at the back of my mind on this one. One last observation on this particular badge. Whoever finished it must have overdone it on the beer the night before, he nearly cut through one of the arms on the swastika, cheers,

Paul

[Norm F]

One last observation on this particular badge. Whoever finished it must have overdone it on the beer the night before, he nearly cut through one of the arms on the swastika,

Hi Paul,

Good observation highlighting the variability of the hand cutting. Here's a comparison of three examples (rishoej's on the left) showing that no two are exactly alike.

Best regards,
---Norm

[Norm F]

My musing on the possibility of separate dies for the Type 2.1 versus the later variations (e.g. Type 2.4) was just that - a musing.

I'd like to go back to this theory of different dies for a moment. We know that when Schickle moved from the hollow back badge to the solid variant, at the very least he used a different reverse die. Whether the same obverse die was used or not I couldn't say.

Look at the backs of these four examples of the same variant being discussed in this thread. Although it's sometimes hard to see on the photos, they all share the same linear markings on the wreath suggesting these were flaws in the reverse die used for this run. These flaws are not seen in future variations as will be shown in the next post.

[Norm F]

So here are the next two variations described in the Schickle timeline thread. Notice that these (and all future variations) lack the linear flaws seen in the previous variation.

So it appears that a different reverse die was used from this point onwards. Now, whether a separate sister obverse die was also used is the unanswered question. Earlier I was just thinking out loud that perhaps Schickle had to make (or have made for him) a new deeper obverse die at the same time. It looks like the same trimming stamp was used for the interior cutouts.

It was no big deal to have more than one production die set from the same master. We see that all the time in Schwerin's production for example.

Best regards,
---Norm