DougB exposes "Champagne Rune" SS Decal Fraud and Adds a Coffin Nail to XRFacts
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I doubt it. It will be like a peasant revolt in North Korea. Those who would stand up got disgusted, left WAF and started / went to new sites or were banned. Those which remain, many who are profoundly waftarded, can't rise up, that's what makes them waftards.
tjg79
Senior Member
That is a good one. I wasn't thinking of peasants in a totalitarian regime.
tjg79
Senior Member
Although, there's another post over on WAF that appears to be targeted against Hicks, because it quotes his XRF diatribe posted on his website. If Hicks fails to honor his COAs, then I think this C SS lid fiasco will get really interesting. I think the real entertainment hasn't begun yet.
The collecting community is going to see what COAs are worth, and particularly, what a Hicks COA is worth. I've never bought anything based upon the existence of a COA, or not. This is pretty interesting stuff. So far, Hicks has an essay and XRFacts on his side. A visual of the current reactions by the waftarded and the owners of Champagne Rune SS helmets:
Invite him over in a separate thread to square up how his lid tazer "authenticated" an airbrushed "Champagne Rune" art
decal" as being the same "elementally" as an original SS decal, except with "3% copper". I'm sure his response will be "we cracked the code", if you hear from him, or some other driveby nonsense. IMHO, the guy and his lid tazer are amusements at this point, not to be taken seriously.
tjg79
Senior Member
That point happened a long time ago.
M45
Well-known member
ZAM and Doug
"The criticism you received in that thread is due directly to the fallout of "sole source authentication" and publication. You didn't publish a book or have the expertise so who the hell are you?"
I detect a cop-out here. Brow-beat people for criticizing C-SS and then blame it on "sole source authentication". "Who the hell are you?" pretty much sums up attitudes in this hobby. A few collecting buddies got together and decided they knew everything and that everyone else needed to listen to them. They were "right" and everyone else was wrong.
"The criticism you received in that thread is due directly to the fallout of "sole source authentication" and publication. You didn't publish a book or have the expertise so who the hell are you?"
I detect a cop-out here. Brow-beat people for criticizing C-SS and then blame it on "sole source authentication". "Who the hell are you?" pretty much sums up attitudes in this hobby. A few collecting buddies got together and decided they knew everything and that everyone else needed to listen to them. They were "right" and everyone else was wrong.
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I think your opinions are consistent with DougB's. As I have previously posted I think that each of you has made the two most important contributions to the helmet collecting hobby with respect to information. The ultimate reveal of the Great Champagne Rune Hoax was significantly advanced by lot number research.
tjg79
Senior Member
Kelly Hicks @ SS Steel said:SS Decal Variations, an Informational Compendium. (Extract)
*My viewpoint on Champagne Rune Decals.
Based on having seen these decals since the 1970s, my viewpoint has always been that they are real. They were not plentiful, but they appeared occasionally over the years, on M35, M40 and M42 shells. Back in those days, our analysis was very thin, consisting mainly of ‘first’ and ‘second’ pattern decals, but frankly not even that sophisticated. I did not even differentiate them visually back at that time, because I saw so few SS helmets available anyway (this was based on my observations starting 40-50 years ago). In subsequent years, as I encountered them ‘in the field’, I considered recognized them as part of the SS decal pantheon. Friends of mine over the years sometimes expressed doubt in their originality, so in my early SS books—while I picture them—I do not specifically say they are different, even though by 1993 I definitely had noticed they were made differently. And of course there are fake ones, just as there are fake Qs, ETs and Pochers. Many fake champagne runes, (two of which I’ve had in my hands) were said to have been done by an American and sold on ebay.
Evidence supporting my viewpoint on Champagne Runes:
As I show in SS-Steel, I vet purchased two of them in the early-mid 1970s. In my first book, SS Helmets, published in 1993, I show one or two M35s with champagne runes. One is an NS and one is an ET. There are color closeups of the decals, which show the celluloid underlay and other characteristics of ‘mainstream’ decals of a more conventional manufacture technique. So from the early-mid 70s to 1993, I had collected a total of 4 champagne rune bearing SS helmets, along with probably thirty five Q, and ET helmets. I did not even see my first EF pattern decal helmet until 1994, and while I thought it was inherently real, I had no point of reference on it. This was how asunder the analytical body of evidence on helmets was back then. With the internet the way it is today, you can learn 20 years’ worth of hard earned knowledge in about six months. (You can also un-learn a lot with the equally fast pace of mis-information nowadays.) There is no substitute for experience.
Long after I had come up with my catalogue of SS decals and their correlation to helmet makers, which I did in the latter 1990s, I published the first edition of SS Steel to advance my theory on ‘NS pattern’ decals. I actually got the idea for the term ‘Champagne Runes’ decals from my mentor, Al Barrows, who in more than one conversation shared with me that he also thought there was a subdued version of the SS decal, which had a champagne like look to it.
I first featured champagne runes as a decal variation in my first volume of SS-Steel in 2003. As I was preparing to publish SS Steel “Expanded Edition” in 2008-09, I had begun more earnestly cataloging and studying champagne runes. Collectors had been sending me their champagne rune helmets for my analysis. I noted that some had appeared from such remote corners of the earth, yet bore characteristics of already known examples, so I realized my hypothesis was bearing out in the physical evidence.
In 2010, I encountered XRay Florescence technology, which I embraced as a potentially valuable authentication tool based on the purity of the technology. I participated in the creation of a large database of scans of all the SS helmets’ decals I could get my hands on, approximately 200 examples over a several month period. When we had more than three hundred examples in the database, we developed a mean, a ‘signature’ of the key elements that each decal was made of.
This included champagne runes, which bear nearly the identical signature as a CA Pocher, with the exception of the presence of about 3% copper. I was astounded; this was to me the element that possibly accounts for the bronze color of this type of decal.
The way it basically works is the surface of the object, in this case decals, is bombarded with xray energy from a hand-held device. The device reads the molecular, non-organic (metals basically) materials that make up the decal. These can be distinguished from the underlying helmet metal and also from the paint. The amount of certain elements in the decals is pretty consistent within a very, very small margin of error. In the case of decals produced in old fashioned printing methods in the 1930s and 1940s, a very different array of elements is presented than modern plastic and silicate fakes. Very different. Not only that, each maker’s SS decal from the period only varies from the others by a fraction. Such was the case with champagne runes, which basically show the same characteristics as a Pocher or a Quist, with the exception of added copper. The data are difficult to present in a simple way, but when I have the data charts in a way that conveys the information clearly, I will update them into this pdf so readers can see the numbers.
What collectors further need to understand is that XRay Florescence technology is a widely used methodology for determining the age and authenticity of an inorganic object based on its composition. It is not a guess, and not a “what if”; it is an empirical scientific methodology. Chemical engineers seem to have no problem understanding this, but collectors not close to it can be told it is wrong or does not work, and therefore their understanding of it falls down. It is fact based and objective, and available to all. The damage done to the technology some helmet discussion forums, by saying it was flawed, was immeasurable; a boon to fakers who now have a clearer path to deceive collectors with even more advanced renditions of their fakes—of all kinds (remember, there are fake pochers, quist, ef Austrian, etc; all decals are faked profusely).
Here are links that the reader can follow to see what XRF technology is and how it is presently used by the top forensic and research specialists in the world. This is a useful tool in many applications, in standard use in museums and other venues throughout the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_fluorescence
https://www.bruker.com/products/x-r...ntal-analysis/handheld-xrf/how-xrf-works.html
http://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-...-scenes-the-department-of-scientific-research
https://www.facebook.com/metmuseum/...7635.1073741849.6296252634/10152626482012635/
http://blogs.guggenheim.org/checkli...ue-the-met-and-the-guggenheim-combine-forces/
https://www.royalarmouries.org/what-we-do/conservation/conservation-in-practice/xrf-analysis
http://www.history.org/history/museums/conservation/analytical.cfm?showSite=mobile
https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/comm...-the-book-of-the-dead-using-xrf-spectroscopy/
https://www.fieldmuseum.org/science...sis-facility/portable-x-ray-fluorescence-pxrf
https://www.britishmuseum.org/about...scientific_techniques/x-ray_fluorescence.aspx
http://www.getty.edu/museum/conservation/papers.html
http://www.artcons.udel.edu/about/k...iques-and-scientific-terms/x-ray-fluorescence
https://ellencarrlee.wordpress.com/tag/museum-xrf/
http://airandspace.si.edu/explore-and-learn/multimedia/detail.cfm?id=10012
http://upers.kuleuven.be/en/book/9789058679079
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17867530
https://www.uantwerpen.be/en/rg/axes/research/research-topics/in-situ-ma-xrf-scann/
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168583X10000844
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24004868
http://www.heritagesciencejournal.com/content/1/1/2
https://www.royalarmouries.org/what...vestigating-a-sixteenth-century-welsh-buckler
This technology is in use by nearly every major museum in the world.
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I believe that this is the "lengthy essay" that's been referred to in previous posts, the C SS lid auction site, and DB's dissertation Mythbusting the Champagne Decal.
Hicks appears to still rely on XRF lid testing for support.
The entire document is broken into three parts and they are attached as pdf documents.
I'll likely debunk the XRF topic on the lengthy XRF thread.
It's amazing what financial concerns can justify.
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tjg79
Senior Member
That was my first impression when I read it. He's still living in 2010 when XRFacts was rollin'.
The major flaw, notwithstanding his misunderstanding of XRF, is that he fails to address the template "spray job" evidence. DB is confident he can show any C SS lid insignia to be spray painted. His argument is moot if he can't prove a decal.
"There are many more flaws in XRF that are written about and with searches can be found here, on WAF and on K98 Forum. In fact K98 Forum was the main bulwark against which XRF crashed."
tjg79
Senior Member
I think the problem with the C SS lid is Hambone. He's the troublemaker. He was kicked off of WAF, because he was disruptive and wouldn't drink the XRF kool-aid, so he subsequently posted persistent malicious information about the "savior of the hobby" on Gunboards and the K98k Forum doing immeasurable damage to the technology.
I believe that we came to the same conclusion at the same time and fortunately had a venue to continue an open discussion after Vid at Gunboards censored, deleted and stopped it. Interestingly, Bugme and the guys at US Militaria came to the same conclusions independently. I knew something was wrong when a XRFacts lawyer sent a long threatening demand letter trying to censor us. He demanded we delete all threads, apologize for being wrong, and post an ad and links for XRFacts in place of the criticism. I personally responded to him in a way you can imagine and he broke like the wind, never to be heard from again.
You share just as much blame for the crash of XRFacts' science as I do
However the proper responsibility for the fail is XRFacts itself. As an aside, DougB thanked us and said that he had mistakenly confused us with Gunboards, and that the Epic XRFacts Thread here is the intended "bulwark" reference in his work. That citation was amended. That XRFacts thread has significant information, not only the scientific discussion, but special guest star appearances by Maui and DougB. One day we can do a redacted Cliff Notes version of it.