Hi guys,
Today I manage to snag an unusual bayonet from the grandson of a US Coast Guard vet who served in both the Pacific and the ETO.It's a Curna product with an etched blade marked with the typical "Zur erinnerung an meine dienstzeit" sentiment flanked by two eagles with swastikas.The ricasso below the etch is marked "Solingen" the reverse ricasso with the Curna logo.Is the etched blade a Curna made one or did they just hilt one made by another firm?
Thanks & best regards,
Len
#2
#3
Len if you buy a reproduction the condition is much nicer and the frog will smell new !
Len,
This is the first etched Curna (E.H. Otto Curdts Nachf. GmbH, CURNA, Stahlwarenfabrik, Solingen) that I recall seeing.
To me, it looks a standard Eickhorn etch. My guess would be that Curna purchased the blade from Eickhorn. Can anyone else add info on this extremely interesting blade?
I am no expert but if real it is a rare one. Denny is correct that this etch seems to be a standard(3219) Eickhorn etch. I have not seen a lot of Curna TM's and none with an engraving.
To quote Wayne Techet page 28 "Carl Eickhorn and Puma-Werk did not wholesale Extra-Seitengewehre with their unique motifs to other Solingen companies".
So he(Wayne) probably had not seen one of these before he published his book on etched bayonets.
You should contact Wayne about this bayonet.
TKissinger
Hi JC & TK,
If it ain't real than a master forger went to a whole lot of trouble for fifty bucks."To quote Wayne Techet page 28 "Carl Eickhorn …did not wholesale Extra-Seitengewehre with their unique motifs to other Solingen companies".Well right now Johnson has two similar bayonets on his website, one with the Eickhorn logo and the other simply marked Solingen.Both also bear the stamp of different makers/dealers,"Ferd. Erdt Kaufbeuren" & "Esser & Co., Köln, Krebsgasse 20".
Best regards,
Len
The hilt is typical Curna. Just to find a Curna marked bayonet is hard, let alone one with etching.
I would say that it is possible, but would want to see it in hand.
Ron Weinand
Weinand Militaria
Len,
If you are coming to the SoS, bring it with you. Wayne normally has a table at the show and could give you his opinion. If you do, please bring it around to my tables also. I'd love to see it. I'm sure Terry would too.
Personally, I'm inclined to think it's good.
To quote Wayne Techet page 28 "Carl Eickhorn and Puma-Werk did not wholesale Extra-Seitengewehre with their unique motifs to other Solingen companies".
I think Wayne was talking about Eickhorn selling their etch patterns or blades to other bayonet makers not Retailors of Distributors.
TKissinger
I tend to agree with Terry that Curna may well be considered a "retailer" or "distibutor" rather than a "maker." In this case I suppose it would be possible that Eickhorn simply did not mark this bayonet blade and sold it separately.
This bayonet etch is a bit askew and poorly placed on the blade. This could indicate a couple of things. One might be that the blade is a postwar reproduction as this is surely an Eickhorn etch on a Curna marked blade. Another might be that this is an Eickhorn "second" quality blade that was not marked Eickhorn on the blade and sold to Curna. Yet another possibility is that Wayne is incorrect and that Eickhorn did sell etched blades to other makers/distributors. Perhaps Eickhorn just sold the blade as parts or manufactured the whole bayonet and then wholesaled it to Curna.
At any rate, it is an interesting bayonet for the etched blade specialist.
George
George wonder where Wayne T got the info that Eickhorn didnt sell to other makers or distributors? Can anyone contact Wayne on this?
George and others
Do you agree with the following
Bayonet Maker--a company that produces a bayonet from parts they manufacture or in combination with parts purchased from another company.
Retailer/Distributor--a company/retailer that doesn't make bayonets but want their name stamped on a bayonet to resell or as gift to be given out for whatever reason.
Fisher has Curna as a maker of pocket knives, scissors, straight razors, safety razors, cutlery, and knives in 1922. He also lists Curna as a SA maker.
If Curna is a maker they may have had Eickhorn etch some of their blades or bought some Eickhorn blades w/o their TM but had theres stamped on them. If this is true then Wayne may need to revise his book. New things are coming to light everyday.
I have depended on reference books and opinons from the old collectors for years. As we all know we don't know everything about a lot of WWII edge weapons, badges, and etc. You can go to almost any forum and see new things coming to light.
Len
I hope this bayonet is good, its good for the hobby.
TKissinger
John,
I do not know where Wayne got the information in his book regarding Eickhorn. I do know that Eickhorn and WKC sometimes traded and sold parts back and forth, but I don't know about etched KS98 blades. New information comes to light every day and I am sure Wayne made his statement in the light of what he knew at the time. The same is true with all authors, including yours truly. We can all be mistaken.
Terry,
I can agree that the line is blurry with bayonet makers versis retailer/distributors. I looked at Goins and he does not list Curna as a maker or even with a topical mark on pocketknives. But, perhaps he had just not seen one and Fisher had. John Walter does not list Curna as a maker in either his "The sword and bayonet makers of Imperial Germany 1871-1918" or his "German Military Letter Codes" that is derived from the official Fertigungskennzeichen...
I could accept this Eickhorn etch on a Curna marked blade if Curna is what we might consider an assembler/retailer. Kind of like Burgsmiller marked NPEA daggers or Waffen Lösche marked Luftwaffe Forestry sidearms. I might even accept the somewhat poor etch as an Eickhorn second quality blade that was wholesaled. One would almost have to have the thing in hand to determine that the etch was not put on an old original blade though. That is an old trick of the German fakers and it makes a very convincing upgrade to an otherwise more common and slow moving item. This was a common method of selling old KS and police bayonets to enhance them with a postwar etched blade as most of us are familiar with.
Len,
I too hope it is a real piece but one must be careful and look at the red flags (of which there are several). One other thing that has not been mentioned is the "SOLINGEN" stamp on the obverse of the blade. I tend to equate this generic stamp to second quality blades that are sold without the maker's name. IMHO, this is a good sign that this blade may in fact be an Eickhorn blade that did not pass quality control but was not so poor as to be scrapped. I can devise a scenario where this blade might have been wholesaled to Curna (with the generic SOLINGEN stamp) who then stamped their own name on it.
Len, look closely at the etch and the stamps. Is the solingen stamp placed on the blade differently than the Curna stamp. Was the Curna stamp applied after the blade was plated? It appears to break through the plating. I tend to believe the bayonet is good from the photos.
George
I am quite sure that Curdts Nachf (Curna) was a manufacturer. I have found both SA Daggers and M98 Dress Bayonets in motel buys from veterans with the Curna and Curdts Nachf TM.
The M98 Dress Bayonet hilts were somewhat below standards and rather cheap, but did have one with stag grips, so some options were available evidently. Therefore it would be possible that an etched blade was an option.
As to Wayne's assumption about Eickhorn, I wonder if it was his idea based on not seeing Eickhorn patterns of etching on other company trademarked blades? As we have seen distributor's marks on Eickhorn blades, it would be no stretch to see engravings with Eickhorn patterns.
We do see the unmarked 2nd Model Luftwaffe Dagger with an Eickhorn based etching. Why not bayonet etchings?
Ron Weinand
Weinand Militaria
Ron,
You make a good point about the unmarked Eickhorn Luftwaffe daggers. I particularly like the fact that Len's bayonet blade has the generic "SOLINGEN" marking in addition to the Curna stamp. The more I think about it, the more I think you are right that Curna probably hilted this blade and then stamped their name on it. My guess would be that Eickhorn etched the blade and sold it to Curna as parts who then finished the bayonet and sold it under thier own name. Why go to the trouble to forge and etch this blade if they could walk down the street to Eickhorn and buy them wholesale as parts.
I think we might be talking at cross purposes sometimes when we try to divide these folks up into manufacturers or dealers or whatever. They were all merchants who were trying to make a Reichsmark by selling Blanke Waffen. To them, parts is parts. No doubt Curna manufactured some items themselves and bought parts from others, just like most other Solingen "makers" did.
I really think that Len's bayonet is a perfectly good piece as all the red flags can be explained by what we know of the way Solingen merchants conducted business. I would buy it and be perfectly happy with it.
George
In line with the thinking that has been presented here: There is considerable provable physical evidence that even the largest Solingen makers at times used components made elsewhere when it was in their best economic interests to do so. When you factor in smaller makers with less resources - logic dictates that they did the same on an even greater scale although who did what might or might not be provable based on the objects themselves.
Which means that as George stated that sometimes the “red flags” may be the result of normal business practices rather than an attempt to counterfeit an item. FP
While this etched dress bayonet looks correct there are a "few" thing that bother me about it.
First...Guys notice the hilt fingerguard. Eickhorn had a particular flattened portion to the guard at it's end. I feel if Eickhorn was the original producer it would also have this flattened portion. It does not...by the great pictures taken here.
Second... any of you guys seen a "short" model original Eickhorn with the wide blood fuller as seen in the above pictures (see my book page 121 for examples)I haven't, but I would also confess I have not seen EVERY short Eickhorn blade either.
Third, take a look at the example in my book page 121. Notice very little space between the top and bottom of the blades edge. This does not seem to be the case on the above example.
This to me would be the "strike three" for me.
Only my opinion..based on observation.
I also did mention in my book that the Eickhorn
firm only sold to distributors and not other smaller Soligen retail outlets. Twenty years of observation not only by myself but by others who have produced buying catalogs and wrote maker and trademark identification led me to that conclusion. I feel it's pretty solid, but I'm always willing to "bend" the decision to an example I can believe in.
Hi Wayne,
Glad you piped in on this particular bayonet. You are much better at etched blades than I am and this is an interesting example.
I agree with you about the hilt not being an Eickhorn product. Ron makes that point as well and he believes it to be a typical Curna hilt. That much seems clear so this does not seem to be a red flag after all. That leaves the blade.
I suppose there are three possibilities: First, the bayonet is a fake. Second, the bayonet was assembled by Curna with an Eickhorn manufactured etched blade. Third, the bayonet was made by Curna and the blade was etched with the Eickhorn template.
The questions, it seems to me, are would Eickhorn have poorly etched this blade and then sold it to Curna as a "second" quality because it failed quality control? Would Eickhorn have etched someone else's blade blank for them as a sub-contract? Would Eickhorn have leased the template to Curna for them to etch the blade?
It seems to me that Johnson has correspondence in the WKC and/or Eickhorn files that indicates these two makers (at least) did sell parts back and forth.
George
ORPO,
Got to get my feet wet sometime....ok lets go to the blade. Strike four, see the slightly CURVED area on the upper right corner of the etch while the bottom corner is perfactly cut sharp. In all original exemples I have seen the ricasso areas top abd bottom are cut sharp with a well formes edge (not slightly rounded).
Personally, I feel the give-away to this etched piece is the fact that the wide blood groove is seen and not the "stepped" fuller. Why would Eickhorn sell a wide fuller piece to Curna when they didn't produce them "inhouse"? Granted it is possible that Curna ordered the blades etched and then put on their own hilts. This possibility is certainly streching though. But again, why wouldn't Eickhorn use their own blades for the run? The whole order is illogical.
Yes, WKC did purchase parts from other makers but they got their etched bayonets only from the Holler Firm as we see from their etched examples. IF WKC did purchase from another dress bayonet producer I have'nt seen it yet!
Page 28 gives the blade maker and vendee relationships that I have known.
Curna may well have been a distributor, I
really don't know but then neither does anyone else apparently. Didn't Luft. and Army dagger blades get stamped with distributor and well as maker trademarks?
I see nothing wrong with this bayonet--but -to be sure one would have to hold it in the hand. I do think the idea that it could not be real because of the blade style is just not even close to being correct. ANYTHING could be ordered and MANY things not seen before are seen every day--even after 20-30-40-50-60 YEARS of looking.
Also-the idea that everything the Germans made was perfect is far from the truth and MANY obviously original examples can be seen with major obvious flaws. The Railway dagger crossguard flaw is just one.
A perfect example of something never ( Whoops -almost never I mean ) seen is the SS bayonet discovered at the SOS.
Remember that when you say "never" or "always" in this hobby--you will almost always be wrong.
1st patt lufts had distributor marks although very rare. armys are more commonly found with them
sean
This quote from Carters book on trade marks page 109-110 E. H. Otto Curdts Nachfolger GmbH, Stahlwarenfabrik.
"By 1922, when the brandname Curna was used, the firm's products were listed as all types of cutlery, bread, butcher's meat and vegetable knives, scissors for all purposes, pocket and pen knives and also razors. During the Third Reich a few early SA and NSKK daggers were produced bearing the round trademark with the sword and triangle in the center."
He also has copies of pierod advertisements in his book. The company dates back to 1851. I have seen 12 or so bayonets thru the years and none in very good shape. I own two with different looking TM's.
I to would like to see this up close.
TKissinger
Looking at both early (and later) “milspec” issue Solingen made bayonets they are not “cookie cutter’ identical. There are time period variations by any given specific maker, and variations between the makers themselves.
Furnaces, drop forges, rolling mills, metal casting foundries, deep drawing equipment, plastics manufacturing equipment, electroplating equipment, paint booths etc. etc. are not the types of equipment that are easily portable. And they all take up space. Sometimes a lot of space. And some of the equipment even back then would not have been inexpensive.
My point being that some companies had the facilities and specialized equipment to actually manufacture various items. And aside from distributors who had items made to order and branded - a number of others were not manufacturers in the true sense - but more in line with being parts finishers. Who put their name on “supplied to the trade“ components they completed/finished - irrespective from whomever actually supplied the parts. And that even the largest actual manufacturers subcontracted for some components for completed items that they made and sold.
And if large makers can have manufacturing variations. I don’t think that it’s unreasonable to assume that smaller makers will or could have even more manufacturing variations over a given time period. FP
Hello guys,
I want to refresh this old topic. The reason is that I have found another CURNA marked bayo with Eickhorn etch.
The bayo was on auction in an auction house in Germany. I placed a bid on it, but the lot was withdrawn finally, so I have only these photos I've asked from the auction house.
What do you think?
Janos
I have copied the two etches for comparison. There are several differences between the two. If Curna stamped there TM on the blade after receiving them from Eickhorn factory they would have to plate them, which is possible. There are only two options, either fake or real. If some one is etching these (post war) they would have to be re-plated.
Maybe they were seconds sold by Eickhorn.
I am not really very convinced with either example.
Look at the front bookends and the placement of the fleur de lys and the border line, for one thing.
I would want to have one in hand, for sure, but these pictures would not make it easy for me to buy either.
John
Terry,
Don't forget that Eickhorn could have stamped the Curna name on the blade before it was plated and sent to them for sale. Manufacturers certainly etched distributor names on the blade spine and then shipped them to the dealers. I can't tell much from the photos I am afraid.
Orpo
Yes you may be correct, they could have etched and stamped the TM before shipping.
I was wondering why we were seeing two of these recently but then I checked the post of the first and it was in 2005. Less face it, there are a lot of collectors out there that don't know about GDC or any of the other collector forums and have things that we have never seen. I once bought a bayonet off a major dealer 25 years ago and sent it back because I thought it wasn't right, boy was that a mistake. It was one of a kind and was afraid of it. I have never seen another like it and and the owner is keeping it to him self.
Terry,
thats why I posted the photos here. The bayo is not mine, I am not affected in the subject at all. I don't want to legalize this version.
I just found very interesting that another CURNA bayo encountered with Eickhorn etch after 7 years.
Probably it is something new to the collector comminity.
Best regards,
Janos