Is this real???

I know most of you will recognize the pattern!It was sold to me as Swiss but I have my doubts. I have compaired it to a number if German WWII items and the pattern appears to match. Is the material real???[img][/img]

I will compare it to some early swiss Zelt I have , it would help to know is it just a piece of fabric , or a zelt or what ????

It does not match my early Swiss , it could be the fabric being printed in Eastern Europe right now , they are making some nice repo Leiber and selling it on ebay .

The piece is a poncho without a hood. I've had this for maybe five to seven years. I've turned over a corner to show the white unprinted side.[img][/img]

It could if old be post war Czech , there camo was almost identical to Germany's it could also be Early west German trial piece made in Belgium collectinsteve may have better info , the square cut is not wartime at all from what I have read or seen , Interesting piece , too bad there are no tags or stamps .

If old my bet is on Czech . the square cut is similar to Czech pieces.

How about some detail shots of the grommets and head hole and anything else you might think could help Identify it ,Buttons , toggles and such .

I would love to have this piece , if Czech or West German your very lucky to have it .

BTW Im going with Czech as the W.German trial stuff all was a olive green on the reverse side from what I have seen .

Here are some detail shots. The snaps say "Scoville Mfg Co".

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Scoville Mfg Co Is an American company and has been around a long time ,but that does not mean much if its a prototype piece , very strange , I do not think its Czech anymore , I am guessing homemade at this point , but CollectinSteve has way more experience then me , I would like to hear what he thinks , could just be something a reenactor made in his basement ??

Scovill website click here

This poncho has been a mystery from the beginning. It was supposed to have belonged to a physcian that had passed away with a rather large camo collection. This is just one piece from a lot I purchased. Even if home made, I still like it for the pattern! Danke, panzerwerk!

Absolutely !!!! a nice piece , I would buy it too !!!

Very nice! And also very interesting. Here's my guess...

It's reproduction WW2 Leibermuster cloth made into an inexpensive patterned US type rain poncho. You can knock out several of these with the same work needed for a single jacket, so if you're looking to move surplus cloth... it's a way to go. The cloth is, however, completely unsuited for a rain poncho

I don't think it's Swiss cloth (definitely not Swiss issue) because it isn't the same pattern. Interestingly enough, there are some distinct differences between the Swiss, the experimental 1954 Bundeswehr, and WW2 Wehrmacht patterns. Czech is completely different, so there's no problem confusing that into the mix. Here are the tell tail signs of which Leibermuster is which:

1. Swiss has fairly dense and blobby blacks with dense overlays of green shapes. The white/green flecks are fairly large and few inbetween.

2. Bundeswher has more sparse and complex looking colors in general. The black especially is well defined with occasional pieces having significant "holes" in them. The red and green colors have far longer and thinner streaks. The cloth was also run through two black rollers, one with the large finger like shapes and the other with smaller blobs with reduced opacity (similar to the Amoeba shelter halves). Interestingly, the back panel of my jacket was only run through the larger black roller, while the pieces used for the pockets and trousers were run through both.

3. From what I can tell there's no good way to differentiate between Wehrmacht Leibermuster and BW Leibermuster except by side by side comparison. The only possible thing I've noticed is the Wehrmacht version has more clear space between the rows of black shapes than BW version, which is itself less dense than Swiss.

Obviously a small company getting ahold of original WH or BW issue cloth is not credible, so it has to be from one of these various reproduction runs. There have been such runs of various interpretations of WH Leibermuster on the market for decades.

Personally, I'm surprised we haven't seen more stuff like this made from Swiss cloth since there had to be hundreds or thousands of meters of fabric left unused when the Swiss moved to TAZ82 (lightweight Leibermuster) and then TAZ90 (green based Leibermuster). Usually the fabric winds up being bought by companies like Scoville MfG. I suppose the Swiss were big meanies and had their excess cloth destroyed.

BTW, remember that with Leibermuster the black rollers are of a different (smaller) diameter than the other colors. This means that the black is never in the same exact place because it isn't synched with the rest of the colors. This is unlike almost all other patterns and the ramification is that if you use the black to ID the pattern you basically must ignore all the colors underneath since they will never line up together.

Cool item none the less!

Steve

I don't have a good shot of a Swiss shelter/poncho on hand, but I do have this one. It's good enough to see there's a difference between the two:



And a picture of BW Leibermuster:



Steve

Yes, I can see the difference between the Swiss vs BW! My poncho looks very close to your BW jacket! I guess I kept the piece with a hope that the material might be WH. I've asked myself after stareing at it for hours, why someone or company would go to such great lenghts to replicate just the material? You would think why not go all the way and cut the material the way it was originally made? Well, I think Steve has touched on this, "You can knock out several of these with the same work needed for a single jacket, so if you're looking to move surplus cloth... it's a way to go."

I'm keeping up the faith that someone, someday will say, Hey there's that lost surplus WH material...maybe! Thanks Steve!

Before the Chinese got into the reproduction business there were few suppliers of cloth like this because it was very expensive to produce and it took a pretty large run to interest any manufacture with the print rolling equipment. So it's highly likely that whoever made the cloth wanted to unload the surplus fast (cheap). That or the reproduction project went bust at some point.

Last year I saw a couple of Leibermuster reproduction sets from a guy in the Czech Republic. Very nice, very expensive. One thing that seems to typify the reproduction cloth is the sort of light, subtle colors of your cloth. I have no idea if this is accurate or not since the only pictures I've seen of the real things aren't good and/or the items are extremely faded.

Steve

Since this old post I've learned a bit more about the cloth.  That poncho's cloth is consistent with the cloth WAF members feel is genuine, so my thinking is that US poncho was made from original cloth.  The other thing I've learned is how to differentiate BW cloth from wartime cloth:

1.  BW used two black rollers that were independently rolled.  One was done at full color the other significantly reduced in strength (you can see the colors underneath).  This same technique was used by the Germans for the black on all Amoeba and Splittertarn variants made in the 1950s and the experimental Palm pattern of the early 1960s.

2.  There is almost no white in the small dots of the BW pattern, whereas there is pronounced white in the wartime pattern.

I've not analyzed the two patterns further, so I'm sure there are other differences.

Here's a shot of the back of another one of my jackets for better comparison.



Steve

Steve,

Thank you for the follow up after all these years! Believe it or not I still have it! I've been out of touch neglecting my hobby but there is good news, I've retired from the workforce and now able to get back and see what I have missed!

Talk to you soon,
Ernest