Alum. Copper TK: comments and a Q

[Ammersee]

Comments welcome and I have a question. Here are pics of an aluminum TK that's been heavily cleaned/polished. It shows remains of copper plating. My question: Was this skull silver at one time, the copper being necessary to plate the silver to the aluminum? Or, did they plate them in copper and that was the final finish? Thanks, Ammersee

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[Wolf100]

I don´t think, that this is a good one! Sorry!

[bwanek1]

One of the common materials for SS cap insignia was CupAl. It most often consists of layers of copper surrounding an aluminum core front and back (though some were made using just aluminum on the front and copper on the back). These would then be finished in either a silver wash or silver paint. There is pleny of information on this material on the forum; just do a search for "CupAl."

That being said, this one ain't even remotely close to an original in MANY outward respects which immediately rule it out as a fake in one glance before you would even begin to consider the material.

Brad

[Ammersee]

Thanks for the info and heads up. There is indeed quite a bit of info on this in the archives. I'll see if I can find out more on this silver wash and how it was applied. So many interesting metal finishing techniques used back then and most seem to be a mystery on how they were done. Ammersee