Ulan Regt. 1,2,3 Officer Tschapka

Hey Brian, you used to have a thread that was something like "the anatomy of a chin scale", or something like that. You had a step by step breakdown on rebuilding these scales and you talked about using the fingers from little old lady gloves you would find at antique stores for cheap.

Is that thread still out there? It was pretty comprehensive, but I assume that the pics were lost during the PB mess.

Any chance you could do a step-by-step on the male chinstrap? A "lessons learned" type part of this thread?
 
Brian,

Oberleutnant Freiherr von Entreß-Fuersteneck, taken around 1900.



Also, beautiful work on the scale! I had to make & replace a couple scales that were missing from a kurass a while ago, but I used Labatt's for the template.
It turned out ok...maybe I should have used Moosehead?

Dennis
 
James, they don't make that beer anymore unfortunately, it was causing too many DUY's even for us Canucks. At 8% it was jet fuel! What I will do, is bring down some Labatt's 50 or "Cinquante" as the Quebecois call it. This brew will bring you back to your true roots which as you know are based in Quebec. It also produces severe flatulence but that is all part of the experience! :thumb up: Denis, that picture is fantastic, well done!! Thank you. Bryan there is a post made long ago called anatomy of a chin scale but of course the pictures are gone. I have taken a series of pics of the recent rebuild and will post them shortly here in the Restoration section. I also sent you a PM asking you to contact me via email so that I could give you some additional information. My email is available in the Help section or check out your Private Messages.
 
Dennis: Thank you for your research on this helmet. I have been following this restoration closely as it is my helmet and I was recommended to send it to Brian by another member for restoration after I posted pictures of it in the latest find section. It is my first Tschapka and I kind of stumbled into it. When I acquired it, the cypher was actually inverted per the attached picture. It was only being held by one stitch at the lower right part of the cypher and because I was afraid it might come loose in shipping and I was in a hurry, I affixed it with a new stitch but accidentally inverted it into the position that makes it look like a gothic E. Based on the patina and positioning of the cypher in my initial picture I feel this is actually a gothic D or possibly some other gothic letter. Do you or anyone else have any thoughts on this and who might the owner be if it is a gothic D?
Thank you, Rodney

It looks like I can't post pictures. Sorry

 
Hi Rodney,

I've switched to Picorator since the Photobucket debacle. (Take a look at Site Information: How to Post Photographs). Photobucket essentially wiped out all the photos on the site posted by people using their service.

If you have a photo of the cypher in the correct position it would help me decipher it...no pun intended. I'm not sure it's a "D", but I'll see what I can find.

Dennis
 
Hi Dennis: I hope this works. This is the way the cypher wasbefore I hastily re-sewed it on. I will go with whatever you say but if you look at the surface patina which matches on both crown and cypher, the centered alignment and the dirt or shadow marks behind the cypher this way, it is the way is was and has been for all the times I looked at it before I acquired it.

Thanks, Rodney

 
Hi Rodney,

Thanks for posting the photo. It's a bit of a quandary though, it appears to be, in my humble opinion, a gothic "I", (unless the cypher was broken at some point). I've checked the ranglists I have, and no officer, more specifically a "Freiherr" with that initial listed in UR 1,2 or 3. One caveat, I only have the 1913, 14 and 1926 references.

Perhaps another member can help out?

Dennis
 
I know very little about Gothic letters but having just Googled Gothic I, I would now agree that that is what it looks like. I don't think it is broken. Thank you.
 
Completed the second scale yesterday. The task gets a bit more difficult when you are replacing missing scales with new original ones. However, this part of the job is done. I will next remove the visor from the shell and begin to try and take out those wrinkles. Having the visor off, will make this easier. More photos to come.

IMG_5761-L.jpg


IMG_5760-L.jpg
 
So now we begin the hardest part of this restoration....trying to solve the problems with the shell. I took the front visor off yesterday. These are the "before " pictures and hopefully down the road things will look much better. I doubt very much, that pictures like these have ever been posted on the internet.
IMG_5779-L.jpg

You can see how unique the stitching is both for the visor and sweatband. The way the sweatband is cut out is also unique and I will post pics once I have better light conditions.

IMG_5780-L.jpg

The visor stitching on this tschapka is slightly different than the last officer one I did for Scout17. There are more stitches.

IMG_5778-L.jpg

The front visor has obvious problems and these must be dealt with before restitching. Officer tschapka visors, have 3 layers...first a very thin finished leather outer layer, next a thin stiff cardboard or leather middle part and then a painted cloth layer on the inner side of the visor. It is the 2 cloth and thin leather layers that are folded over and stitched to the shell. You could not achieve a smooth fold where visor meets the shell, if you tried to do the cardboard as well. As to the cloth, it could be either coarse cotton or linen. My choice, would be linen as it is stronger than cotton. In this piece, the thin outer leather has split and given way, not the linen cloth. Obviously, even when these helmets were new, there was a lot of stress on this stitch line when the owner took off his hat and set it down on something. The visor bore much of the weight because it stuck out from the shell.

IMG_5777-L.jpg

This photo shows the 3 layers I talked about....thin leather glued to stiff cardboard/leather then cloth on the inside. The classic" tschapka visor fold" involves only the thin outer leather and cloth on the inside. I have only restitched one Ordinary Ranks tschapka visor. In this case, the middle layer of leather was thicker, and the inside layer was black paper not linen.
Trying to explain this Tschapka construction, even with the aid of photos has been difficult. I hope that everyone can understand what I have tried to describe.
 
Your explanation is clear and well presented. Can't wait for your next installment. I truly enjoy the restoration write ups.
 
This part on the front brim restoration is pretty interesting to me.

I had to figure the construction on one of these brims once for an enlisted tschapka where the guy had taken a bullet in the brain bucket. Entry and exit holes and staining/rot in the back of the interior from brain fluid. The leather part of the brim had been ripped completely off from the kinetic energy from the bullet on the front leaving only the brass trim, so I ended up making a new brim.

Kind of a cool helmet. The Frenchman/Brit who brought it back as an obvious souvenir had painted an arrow on the front and back showing the entry/exit holes. Fortunately, the shock of the impact had obviously torn this tschapka off of the previous owners head fairly quickly, so the body fluids had not messed up too much of the inside.

A buddy let me look at a similar tschapka from his collection, and the construction and unique stitching on these brims became evident and helped a LOT when I was working up my plan on how to tackle this. I probably took about 6 months before I had everything in place and had worked up the courage to knock this out. Measure twice/cut once, and all that. I wish I had this thread to reference when I did my work. I will take some pics of what I did and post once I get back to the States next year.

I am watching daily for updates, and appreciate the time you are dedicating to this Brian. Thank you again for taking the time from your busy schedule to educate us.

S/F

Bryan.
 
saywhat said:
Click to expand...

Hi,

I think we definitly have here a "I" or "J". They were the same in the german alphabet.

can-stock-photo_csp28312728.jpg


A "D" would be thicker (or fatter)...

In the Ehrenranglisten 1902, 1907, 1911 and 1913, there were a few officers with a "J".

UR1: Oberleutnant JOUANNE
UR2: Rittmeister JOUANNE (maybe two brothers), Leutnant JACOB
UR3: Leutnant von JAGOW and Oberleutnant von JAGOW (maybe two brothers two)

I think the two von JAGOW could be the answer (because of the "von" and the crown)

Philippe
:wink:
 
I think we definitly have here a "I" or "J". They were the same in the german alphabet.
Click to expand...
I think it is always hard to identify the cyphers without knowing which font was used. I found many different styles of „Fraktura“-Fonts which are close to this one in the helmet and also to this one Philippe showed. But most of it have a sligthly difference for „I“ and „J“.
Sometimes the difference is the short left orientated horinzontal line in the middle of the cypher or how many of these lines are shown.
In other cases the difference is if bottomline turns up or down, or the way the upper line looks alike (Example 5).
Hard to identify without another cypher is if the vertical Line of the „J“ is a bit longer than the line of the „I“ (Example 3).

For me it looks pretty much like the „I“ of example 5 8-[

01fff749-bfca-4f84-b0d1-d6886d.jpg
 
Sandy,

Just look at the "Namensverzeichnis" at the end of each Ehrenrangliste. All officers with name beginning with "I" or "J" are registered under the same gothic letter.
However, there is no other active officer at the UR1,2 and 3 with name beginning with this special letter as the 5 officers named above :wink:

Philippe
:wink:
 
J is the last letter to enter the Latin alphabet, coming in some time in the mid 18th century. Prior to that the J was a secondary sound for the letter 'I". In English we still have this sound, as in the word soldier (sold-jer). Julius Caesar's initials were IC.
 
Just look at the "Namensverzeichnis" at the end of each Ehrenrangliste
Click to expand...
Thank you for the tipp. Do you know where I can find this list for all years? I only found a prussian one from 1879, the rest is blocked in Google-Books :(

J is the last letter to enter the Latin alphabet, coming in some time in the mid 18th century. Prior to that the J was a secondary sound for the letter 'I".
Click to expand...
Thank you for explanation. I knew that the german fonts used different smal letters for i and j since a long time. The missing difference for capital letters until 19th century was very interesing for me :)
 
Why no J in ancient times? It is hard to carve the hook of a J with a hammer and chisel into marble. :D
 
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