UBB.threads Forums Edged Weapons Army, Navy, and Luftwaffe Forum Tiger Luft 2nd, Triple grip wire.

Hi All,
I have had this Luftwaffe 2nd pattern by Tiger for a couple of years now and decided to show it here as it's quite unusual, it has triple grip wire wrap like the type seen on Luftwaffe 1st pattern daggers which is why I bought it as I had not seen one like this before. After a while I started to doubt if the grip wire configuration was correct because I couldn't find pictures of another one like it anywhere but after a lot of searching on the net I found a few examples of other Tiger Luft 2nd's with the same grip wire though thinner wires than mine I saved the photos for reference and later I found a post from 2013 on the warrelics.eu forum with one exactly like mine, here is a link to the thread at warrelics thread Warrelics thread
If you read the whole thread you will get the gist of it, the main responses are from heers68 who I think is still a member here on this forum? . Anyway here are some photos I took of my dagger and if anyone is interested I can post the pics I saved of other examples but it seems this wire configuration is quite rare and probably unique to Tiger.
Thanks, Andy.

A few more photos.

I can honestly say I've never seen one like this. It's a beautiful looking example. Please post the other pics, I'd love to see them.

Hi Billy, Here the photos I could find I did have a couple more on a gig stick but the files are now corrupt anyway these examples have the inner double twist with a single strand either side of that they aren't very clear photos but look hard and you can clearly see the triple wire configuration. They all have thinner wires than my example and if you read the thread from the warrelics forum I posted heers68 clearly states that his is the same configuration but thinner wires. It took me a long long time to track these few photos down on the net so I believe this grip wire configuration is very scarce and seldom seen and I haven't found any others since! or any more info about these daggers only the thread I provided the link to. I would love to know more but no one seems to know much about them but someone somewhere must, what happened to heers68 he hasn't been on here for a long time and he could provide some information.
Cheers, Andy.

Andy that is a very cool looking dagger i've seen this before somewhere but can't recall where.

Hello AndyBurton, up to now I have not seen such a grip wire. I am aware that there are lot of variants of period factory done grip wires. In this case I personally think that it was privately done. Perhaps because the original one had gone to time. We never will know when this was done, perhaps even during the period by the original owner, because of damaged or lost grip wire or perhaps he wanted to create something special, individual.
In each case, the dagger with this wire looks very nice!
Regards,

One of the pictures shown above is from my collection.

It is a Tiger with the block lettering running along the blade, whereas the first dagger shown has the Tiger maker mark with script lettering also running along the blade.

Here are pictures of my Tiger.

John

Hi John,
Hope you don't mind me using your photo but I kept hold of it because evidence of this grip wire configuration is very hard to find I can't for the life of me remember where I found it was it part of the warrelics forum thread I posted the link to?, really nice to see the photos of your example it proves there are other Tigers with this grip wire and it is obviously factory applied, I would imagine it was probably done to use up stock from 1st pattern daggers but who knows? Anyway I will never sell it as I don't think I am likely to find another like it. Also would you agree that the pommel and crossguard are by Eickhorn?
Regards, Andy.

Hi Andy,

Thanks for posting the additional pics. I understand the point of view that these grip wires may be replacements & my natural skepticism would generally agree with this. But it is also a huge coincidence that Tiger is a recurrent maker with this style grip wire. Very interesting items here.

Andy:

I don't mind my photos being used here... after all, I post these photos for all to see. This is an interesting thread, even though I do not collect, nor tend to notice, things like grip or crossguard or scabbard variations. I have enough on my plate to find maker mark and blade variations

You may very well be correct about the pommel and crossguard since I do not believe that Lauterjung made all of their parts in house. The different maker marks using these wires tend to make me believe that it wasn't just a matter of using up old 1st luft stock... the differing maker marks indicate to me different periods of construction.

Which, Billy, makes me doubt that they were replacements.

J

No I don't believe they are replacements either, if you use the link in my first post and read through the warrelics forum thread heers68 seems to know something about Tiger being the only manufacturers to use this wire configuration on some of their luft 2nd's and yes I agree about the different period maker marks indicating different periods of use. Maybe it was an option Tiger offered at extra cost? which would explain why there are not many around.
Andy.