Lost wax theater-made wing based on AMCRAFT pilot wing?

[pfrost]

Just got this yesterday.  It came out of a largish lot of pilot wings (9 full size wings, a 2 incher and a couple of Bell 1 inch sweetheart wings). 

 

To me it looks like a nice lost wax casting that used an AMCRAFT pilot wing as its base.  It is marked STERLING and 925. I has a C-catch and hand made hinge that is similar to what you see in Chinese-made wings.  Although my suspicion is that this particular wing was made in Mexico, Panama, or one of the other Central American/South American countries that hosted USAAF pilots and squadrons.  There were other theaters of operations beside the CBI and ETO and it just "feels" like something made on our side of the Atlantic/Pacific.

 

That being said, I normally don't like theater-made wings that have used an existing wing as the basis for the new wing.  I like the wings that some craftsman made using his tools and imagination, rather than just making a mold and casting a wing or two.  But that doesn't mean that they didn't use existing wings to make new wings, I just tend not to want to collect them.  Its always hard for me to imagine that some pilot goes into a local shop because he wants some new wings, pulls his wings off his blouse, gives it to the artisan and says... "make me a couple more just like these." 

 

This is a photo of a "normal" AMCRAFT wing and the casting.  I think this is a lost wax casting, since I suspect that after they made the wax mold, they fixed some of the detail before casting the final version.

Anyway, fire away with your comments.

[pfrost]

The main thing that concerns me about cast wings is that, generally speaking, there is no real way to tell if they were cast in 1944 in some local shop in Calcutta, Shanghai, Panama City, or Juarez, or in someone's garage in 1985. 

 

Handle enough cast wings, and you start getting an idea of levels of workmanship. Be it some guy using sand, a tin can and acetylene torch in his garage, WeWhoShallNotBeNamed making museum quality reproductions in his bat cave, a POW using pot metal from this KLIM package in Stalag3, or a guy catering to the local USAAF pilots and crew flying missions out of his country.  This is one of those things were "experts" are few and far between--no matter how many times we write posts on the forum.

[Tesla]

Interesting wing Patrick.  I met a man years ago that made wax castings of badges and other items and he used that exact pin on the backs of the badges.  However, I have no clue as to where it was made.