Army Dagger Crossguard Reference

[gerrit]

The Puma head with eye and beak are die wise, but the second eyelid shown on my Puma is an artistic enhancement, and not shown on Peters example.

In your way of thinking we do not have a Weyersberg or a WKC type 2 but only Pack 3 guards
No generic A but only wkc 4
no late Wingen but Gen.B etc...
No alcoso type 1 or gen.2 or Holler 1
they all look pretty similar aint they?


We disagree futhermore, but thats the beauty of opinions, everyone is aloud having one.

Ger

[Bulldog]

I don't know how your seeing a connection between the WKC type 2 and Pack type 3 guards, you must have noticed WKC 2s have 5 complete wing sections and Packs like most of the other guards have 4, also the wing spines are different etc,etc, there's no way you can link these two guards together like you can with the Horster, Wingen and Puma guards. Yes you can say the Generic A is based on the WKC type 4 and other's agree with this, but the Generic A is called that because it is used by lots of different companies, if the guard we are discussing is found on more producers daggers then this could also become known as an early type of Generic. Yes no late Wingen, I know there is a tiny difference to the Generic B, but not enough to be able to call it their own manufactured guard. I've not getting around to comparing the others you mention but I will add that what you call the Wingen type 1A is a Pack guard, the design of the wings are exactly the same as seen on Pack type 1 and 2, I don't believe Wingen who were a small producer of army daggers designed and manufactured any of the guards they used, especially now that I am seeing this guard on Horster's and Puma's. It appears to me Ger that if you see a tiny difference on a guard you assume that a different company had to have designed and manufactured that guard, even when the other 90% or more is exactly the same, it would be impossible to duplicate this much of an intricately designed guard by accident.

Russ.

[gerrit]

Russ, i lumped it up more like to make a point, rather then being technicaly correct, but what i'm basicly saying is that imo you can assign a guard to a certain producer if their is proof of a batch with specific features so far only found or merely found on that maker.
It always hard to proof which company started with certain features, for example the Höller Type 2 "toolmarks" is this a true Höller feature? recently quite a few early Klaas daggers equiped with silvered alu Pack type 2 guards came to surface bearing identical toolmarks like that Höller, they are also seen on Pack Type 2 daggers.
Who is copying who? or who started it? the fact is we can never proof who did.
New dagger types come to surface every year, and for sure we havent seen all i'm sure.
If a mould or die was designed or cast by another firm in order by a third party, well tell me who should that be contributed to?
The disc behind the swastika for example can be seen on a couple of guards like Klaas type 2, Hörster, this Puma, but who started with that feature?
So far i have seen 3 of these Puma daggers, all similar slants with same scabbardbands etc. with the knowledge of what i've seen sofar this specific one can be contributed to Puma, only time will tell weather thats correct or not.

Ger

[Bulldog]

In answer to your question Ger, the classification of guards is difficult, personally I would attribute a guard to the manufacturer if that manufacturer is known, but in the case of the Generic A I would still class this as a Generic A because it was produced specifically as a Generic to be used by different companies, unlike the Pack 1 which was used by different companies but is mostly found on Packs own daggers. IMO the Generic B would be better classed as Generic B, Generic B-Herder variation/type, Generic B-Wingen variation/type. If a guard cannot be attributed to a company and it is not considered to have been produced specifically as a Generic, then it could simply be classed as unknown. In the case of the Horster, Wingen and Puma we have been discussing here I would (for now) class them as unknown, they could still be shown in books etc under their name but I would not attribute the guards as being their own, but this is JMO.

Russ.