WWII Reenacting Tips

Here are some tips and hints for finding information, gear, events, and general networking. If you'd like to share a thought or idea, please submit it to wwii@womeninwwii.com .

Finding Original 1940's Kit, Gear and Equipment

Ebay is your friend. I swear. The trick is to look under some of the less obvious rocks to get better buys. Sure, if you go into vintage fashions and type 1940's hat into the search box, you're going to pay too much for your great hat. But if you find that same hat listed as just an old or vintage hat, you've got a better chance at getting it at a good price. Remember that there are more categories, too, than just Militaria and Vintage Clothing. Many people believe that army surplus should be listed under old camping supplies.

Reproducing Gear and Equipment

Want to get music in your encampment, but tired of dealing with a cd player and cds? Take an MP3 player with it's 12 hrs of playing time (you may need a second battery, car charger, or a battery pack in case it runs out of juice), and hollow out a vintage radio player. Hollow out a vintage radio or other stowage device and hook up a pair of speakers. If you'd like to share your tunes, the AM / FM transmitters for MP3 players mean that you can actually spread your mp3 tunes throughout your camp with a few AM or FM radios.

Want to spruce up your jacket or footlocker?As an interesting alternative to hand stenciling footlockers and painting nose art, several companies now make water transfer decals that can be printed right from your ink jet printer. They're a great way to make those Army Air Force and squadron decals that seem to appear on everything from period footlockers to training notebooks and radios.

Making a reproduction box the easy way - There are many places on the internet where you can download or buy paperwork or boxes to print out, cut out and assemble. But what happens if you want to make your own? Simply take your box and scan each visible side of the box. Then open up a word processing document and insert each image, until you have a layoutof the box as if it was flat (if you need a point of reference - take a box in your kitchn cabinet that's OK to flatten), and use the rulers to get the graphics to the right scale. Use blank rectangles for your missing flaps (reference your generic kitchen box again), and leave a little tab at the end of the box to glue the halves of the box together. Hit the print button. Use a pair of scissors and cut out the box, and use rubber cement or elmers glue to assemble your box. Once you've gotten your box to the right size and scale, print it out on card stock. If you are very creative, you can melt parafin wax and rub it on to create a waxed box finish. I use reproduction boxes to stash everything from asprin to hair pins, that way if I drop something, I don't have ugly modern plastic lying around.

Doing Research

Bibliographies Pay! Don't ignore the fact that most books have a bibliography as part of your research. If you find that your favorite book has three paragraphs about your impression, you may find that those three paragraphs came from an even better book, or a period magazine.