M40 Tunic from ATF or Hessen?

[farbingstarwing]

I am in a dilemma, after my minor fiasco with hikishop.com I am still not in the possession of a good M40 tunic.
Currently I am considering the M40 tunic from ATF or Hessen.

Basically top of the line mass produced M40 tunic from ATF versus a custom tailored M40 tunic from Hessen.
In terms of price they are pretty equal +- 140 USD. this is kind of my maximum that I would like to spend on a tunic.

ATF asks a whopping 67/70 USD dollar shipping fee for sending the package to Holland/ Hong Kong (where I both live)
For hessen I do not know the shipping cost yet, but I bet within Europe it is not more than 30/40 euro.

Now for sizing the ATF tunic is in terms of chest size great for me (34~36 inch chest) I am at 36 inch (not particular Arnold)
sleeve length is 25 inch, while I am at 24 inch, so this will have to be custom tailored anyway...

Now what you guys recommend? any other vendor is fine too, I already considered gavin, zib, hiki etc but this time I do not want another Chinese made tunic.

[Panzer Wittman]

Hessen is US based too so the postage costs are the same.
Atf's new USA made texted patterned standard line arguably offer the best sensibly priced tunics made at present. I'd Def go with them.
Hessen do very nice gabardine officers tunics, but if it's a standard em/nco tunic u want Def go for atf

[farbingstarwing]

Are those texted tunics from ATF not very expensive as in 500 US dollar? Thanks I thought hessen was based in Europe

[Brigardefuhrer]

Hessen antique is USA based and sells WW2 & WWI items.Its parent company Hessen Antik is in Germany but sells only WWI items.

[Gaulke1944]

Hessen is Chinese as well. made by AntZ. ATF';s new 4140 tunics are also Chinese, but made off their texled patterns, very nice. if you don't want a Chinese made tunic, prepare for upwards of 250 euros...

[farbingstarwing]

W00w guys thanks, this is something I never knew! This brings me a bit into a doubt, since I live in hong kong why the heck would I want to pay money for a item that has been shipped from china to the US and then buy it and send it back to Hong Kong

So perhaps I will then remain sticking to hikishop but let them tailor the tunic into my size and let them work out the kinks that I see as issues on their tunics, they are still way cheaper for me in that case. Custom tailored tunic + shipping is less than 100 USD for me. Which is a huge difference in costs compared with overseas Chinese made tunics.

Perhaps I can find out who is the maker of ATF in china, and directly order from them there is always a load "fallen of the truck" especially with Chinese

But then again are hikishop tunics allowed for reenactment? are they accurate enough? Do your units allow them, or reject them from being worn at reenactment events?

[pepperpot]

if you want 100% accuracy then the only way is to buy originals!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! In this hobby I was told years ago that if you are 80% correct, then that was as near you will get and as long as the MOPS think its 100% accurate then you archived the goal for re enacting. I was lucky my early training was from a WW2 Fallschrimjaeger. Never had any problems with uniform or accuracy and non of the kit was original. Uniforms have always been the problem, early war uniforms were "spick and span", colours matched, every uniform cloned correctly. Late war 1943 onwards you were lucky to get any uniform that matched, too many small companies making them and materials/colour difficult to get. Elite units got the best pick of the bunch. Typical example was Luftwaffe Ground troops who were issued with Heer uniforms while the SS had all the new camo designs. Not unusual to see blue grey jackets with green trousers and vice versa. There are many books on this subject out there but if you want further help contact BRIGARDEFUHRER (john) on this topic
pepperpot

[Gaulke1944]

farbing i assure you you wont find atf's maker and if you do, they wont sell you one.

[farbingstarwing]

farbing i assure you you wont find atf's maker and if you do, they wont sell you one.

No worry, i am too lazy to find that kind of stuff out

[A.Fuhrmann]

ATFs 'new' line of Tunics is made by Memory1945 -> http://stores.ebay.com/Memory1945. It's the same producer that supplied Gavin-Militaria and I assure you, quality-wise there won't be any major differences between the tunics he sells in his shop and the ones he supplies ATF with. He's nice to deal with, you can have a tunic custom made to your measures (for 10$ more) and even state special changes like a different lining fabric or so, at least that's what I experienced a few years ago.

[farbingstarwing]

Awesome, shipping is very cheap for me as well to HK, so I bet he is close by. the tunics looks decent on the pictures, anyone else has positive results with aviator?

[Gaulke1944]

Fuhrmann, please tell me, where you got that from? that is totally incorrect...they are ATF made from their texled patterns.

[farbingstarwing]

I dunno, but from my reading aviator2046 uses the same quality as Gavin, from which I read a few mixed but mainly positive reviews, but since the price is decent including custom tailoring I am willing to try it out

[WaA363]

To me the new ATF tunics looks exactly the same as a Gavin. Gavins tunics has improved over time and the newer runs have been very good looking to me so who knows if Rollin have been sending texled samples to "gavin" so he could copy it. And if thats the case then any new gavin tunic is made from the Texled Pattern

I dont Think gavin makes specific patterns to each company he sells to allthough every shop wants us to believe that their products are so unique.

[farbingstarwing]

Gavin = Aviator2046 right?