SS Eagle - opinion, please

[Ostbat]

Gentlemen's,
How you think, this eagle original or not?
The front is pleasant to me, and the back party is not...
Thanks.
Igor.

[Sayle F]

ss eagle

Looks good. I have had several eagles with that type of backing that were 100% original.

[John T]

You will also see the orange police eagles with that mesh backing...I like the above eagle too and concur with Sayle F.

Meshy material is often used on modern machinery as it keeps the cloth tight (the machine also keeps the cloth tight by stretching it either with a form or just by tension--but often this is not enough) while the stitches are applied, otherwise the design will bunch up...this was not done too much on TR cloth, but it was done at times. Modern designs (such as a sport's team logo) are very intricate and if it were not for the backing to the cloth the design would just lump up and the needle would break.

I think the reason this was not done too much on TR cloth is that they were stingy with the amount of thread used, whereas if you look at US patches you will see this is quite common as there was no shortage of raw materials.

John

[Sonny]

Ostbat, the eagle is just fine. Late war ss eagle that's been around forever.
John T, seems like you know somwthing about cloth production. Could you please help me understand why the early WW II 101st airborne screaming eagles patch had a lot of what I call support stitching on the reverse of the arm patches, and the more modern ones have less. Is it because of the plastic coating they use today instead of more thread. Am I right to think that the wool looking suport stitching is for WW II era only and that no plastic should be on WW II items. Any help would be much appreciated, thanks Sonny

[Ostbat]

Many thanks, gentlemen's!
You to me very much help.
Regards,
Igor.

[John T]

Ostbat, the eagle is just fine. Late war ss eagle that's been around forever.
John T, seems like you know somwthing about cloth production. Could you please help me understand why the early WW II 101st airborne screaming eagles patch had a lot of what I call support stitching on the reverse of the arm patches, and the more modern ones have less. Is it because of the plastic coating they use today instead of more thread. Am I right to think that the wool looking suport stitching is for WW II era only and that no plastic should be on WW II items. Any help would be much appreciated, thanks Sonny

Hi Sonny...that is something I noticed too. I believe that they had the tension tight on the machine and that because of the base material being thick they did not have any mesh backing as you see on the earlier pieces. The plastic glue looking items is on post-war items, but you will see SS diamonds and SS eagles with a sticky looking material on them also. This material was applied over the stitching and my theory is that it was applied to keep the stitching from coming loose. I never really imagined there being any problem with stitching coming loose on embroidered insignia, but there may have been some problems, so some firms may have used this sticky looking "gunk" on the back of SS cloth for this reason.

Kindest Regards,

John