Good morning again,
sorry, but there were some unforeseen stumbling stones in my way I couldn't manage my time better to give you an opiniom on the construction of the Marine-Jugend tally in question. Also, I had to dig fairly deep into my laptop to find these pictures ... only a genius masters the chaos ...
Cap tallies were woven by so called "Jacquard-weaving-machines" (Wiki in German:
Jacquardwebstuhl – Wikipedia). How these beasts were working in detail has been explained by Norm Franke on WAF a few years ago (don't have a link to the thread handy, it was a cap tally thread). However, the work principle dictated that a relatively small loop appeared wherever the little runner (in German: "Schiffchen"- the English term is unknown to me) turned around with the white thread. And THIS is how you recognise an original tally straight away: the existance of the loops!
Now to the front: wherever the small loops are on the reverse, a kind of "shadow" appears on the front above and below each and every letter and number.
At modern machines this loop does not appear anymore due to the improved work principle. And luckily they also cannot re-create this loop again ... we lucky collectors. Also, reproductions of any tallies never had the same quality of the ribbon itself. The ribbon of post war tallies is rather rough and stiff, while pre-45 tallies are somewhat smooth. With the ones from the imperial times, they are indeed silk-like.
I hope the words which I try to find make sense to you at all. Anyway, the pictures might be a bit better to visualise what I tried to explain above.
Before I close this post, another two points:
1. So far only the Reichsseesportschule - tallies were reproduced (the Seeberufsfachschule is not a MHJ tally!) , never one from individual units.
2. The "loop and shadow" phenomenon not being present at repros has one single exception: the "Schlachtschiff Scharnhorst tally, which was sold in the HMS Belfast ships canteen - this was a near-perfect repro in this respect. However, it was never meant to be a repro with the purpose to blinker collectors.
OK, pictures.
1. & 2. The first two are Michael's Marine-Jugend tally. Neither above or below the letter is a loop. Unfortunately Michael has no MHJ tally which he could compare the smoothness with.
3. & 4. The next 2 images show the reverse and obverse of a period "M.HJ CHEMNITZ" - maybe one of you gifted computer geeks can put the reverse of Glueckstadt against the reverse of Chemnitz into a direct comparison on
one picture?
5. & 6. The reverse and obverse of a second pattern Stollberg - also here the loops above and below very well visible.
7. The direct comparison between a 2nd pattern MHJ tally and a repro Kriegsmarine tally.
8. This is how a "2" looks from reverse ... just to show that also numbers and signs show the loops.
9. A stand-off photo of my photo modells - the very bottom one is an extremely rare bird. The V.M.V. was spread all over Germany in relatively small units. VMV ... Vaterlaendischer Marine Verein. Their tallies are very thin and fragile. Good photos with well readable tally are extremely hard to come by as the inscription seems to tended to fade more or less instanttly due to the high copper content of the thread. Therefore on photos the tallies are almost impossible to read. This, b.t.w., has also a bad effect on the interaction of the thread with the fragile ribbon - the letters are sometimes just falling out the ribbon (this can be also seen on early Kriegsmarine tallies with reddish-metall lettering which develops a fairly aggressive corrosion reaction with water)
10. A extract of a studio portrait of the 210 Stollberg in wear. No HJ badge but a monster eagle. I have a second photo of a different boy with exact the same non-conformities!
Rgds
Daniel
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