UBB.threads Forums Uniform & Accessories The Honor Ring Forum TK rings were cast or die struck?

About 15 years ago, I was looking at my only ring, a remake (according to Boyle) of a 30.6.34 ring to an SIPO man. It was very large, 22.5mm inside diameter and weighing 12.18 gms and I suddenly wondered what it was made of. The common statement in books of the period by Boyle and Patzwall and magazine artitcle, was that it was silver. Well, it was obvious there was silver in it as related in the 3 November 1939 report on the quantity of silver available to Gahr for the manufacture of SS-Ehrenringen, SS-Degen -Beschl?gen (fittings) and SS-Zivilabzeichen. The quantity of silver available to Gahr was 15,050 grams. That totals almost 531 ounces or a little over 33 pounds of Feinsilber.I believe this info is also found in Patzwall's book on the TK Ring. I located the documentation myself in the National Archives.

Okay, so I want to know what is in my ring. How much silver. I had a PPK grip tested a few years earlier to determine the exact physical composition of them, so I returned to the same scientific testing lab:Chemir Analytical Services. I supplied them with my ring and they conducted the test using Scanning Electron Microscopy with Energy Dispersive X-ray Analysis as well as density testing. The general conclusion was that the surface of the ring was composed of primarily silver with low levels of aluminum and copper. The density was determined to be 9.95 g/cm3 suggesting the ring was made of a silver alloy. Four areas were tested: the skull, two areas with runic decoration and the edge. All but the swastika on the side showed only large amount of silver and some copper, while the swaz area showed some aluminum

I was chatting with John Pepera about my test and he was fascinated. I urged him to test his rings. At the time he had ten of them that he provided me a list of with names, dates, measurements and weights.Within a week, John provided me with the results of his tests on four rings with various dates: 1939-was either Ramspberger or Koscula, 1939-Bruns, 1942-Stube and 1944-Clement. John used Argo-Tech/ ATC Materials Laboratories in Cleveland and they performed a Niton analysis via Energy Dispersive X-ray Fluorescence. He sent me the results listings. In general, all four were silver alloy with copper in the following percentages:
1934 91.1% silver 8.86% copper
1939 90.5% silver 9.49% copper
1942 96.3% silver 3.70% copper
1944 92.8% silver 715% copper

The actual result showed miniscule amounts of aluminum and tin that were combined with the copper in the genera results.
As usual, my interests found something to research and I left these pages in my TK ring file.