Newbie Grill Question. What If It's 12 X 18 Points?

I have a 3c 1861 stamp with a grill that has 12 points across and 18 points vertically. Overall the grill measures 9 x 14 mm. This doesn't match a listed grill type. The 18th row is narrow. What information am I lacking?



The blue green tones are image artifacts.

Looks manufactured.

stallzer, that is certainly possible. Why does it look manufactured to you? I assume that you use that term to mean NON-officially manufactured.

The stamp's color is dull rose which according to the 3c 1861 shade expert Mike McClung is found on all of the grill types of this series. Other than that, I don't know how I can provide more information.

The points look distorted probably because of the graphite + scanning, but I think it's OK, and it's a genuine "F" grill, even though it has 18 horizontal rows and Scott says 15-17. The points align both horizontally and vertically very well. Last, I doubt anyone would bother faking what can only be an "F" grill with only 12 vertical rows. Granted, a faker might conclude that to make one with 18 horiz. rows would be very "rare" and noteworthy, but I vote for a genuine grill. Let's see what the others think.

Agreed...

Bill... would you positively ID it as 18 or 17.5 given
the possibility of the top row being a half row...

DNA... do you have a scan prior to 'graphite-ing' or
did you acquire it this way...

disi, this is not my handiwork nor handwriting. I wonder about the "half" row having some significance that is explained by the history of grill production. Regardless, I don't imagine that this grill is some holy grail. I imagine that the extra row is explainable in an obvious manner that I hope to learn about.

In essence, I expect to learn that there is a simple explanation about how this is somewhat common. Hopefully our members will be able to make sense of this situation. I also wonder what essayk's thoughts are.

Edited to clarify late night ramblings.

Nice stamp either way!

Can we see the front side please?

Any chance this could be an incompletely pressed D Grill?

No.....a "D" has 15 vertical rows. This has 12. I've never seen a grill misinng 3 rows. And I agree that the top row could be what is called a half row by my good friend Clark Frazier. So bottom line, it's a genuine "F" grill.

Bill, or Clark, tell me more about this half row that Clark speaks of and how it might be applicable to my 18th row. I've seen similar "half rows" on other stamps and wondered about their significance. Are deviations from the commonly accepted grill descriptions somewhat common?

I agree that it's probably an oddball F grill and I hope for an explanation as to how the 18th row could occur. So far, it doesn't seem that anyone else has seen such a thing.

Here's the front:

Bill and Clark are right yet again. Imagine that!



Also mentioned is that the size of the grill is not the determining factor for identification. The counting of full points is what matters.

This is from "THE 1867-68 GRILLS: WHAT WE KNOW AND WHAT WE DON'T KNOW" by Mike McClung published in the USPCS Chronicle that can be found at http://chronicle.uspcs.org/PDF/Chro...87/18018.pdf He appears to be using the most modern definitive work on grills as a reference: "The Story of the United States Grilled Postage Stamps" by William K. Herzog published in the 1978 Forty-Fourth edition of the American Philatelic Congress Book.

I happily found that the U.S. Philatelic Classics Society offers all of the Issues of the Chronicle before 2009 without membership nor payment. When I have the opportunity, this will be the first group that I join.

Hopefully the information that I repeated here is correct. I don't want the viewers of this thread to not have a final answer.

Bill,

Partial or "half" rows exist because of the way grill cylinders are manufactured. A blank cylinder was scored in one direction with a screw machine or lathe around the cylinder. After scoring at right angles across the cylinder, the unwanted grill points were burnished off. Because of the drift of the grooves running around the circumference of the cylinder, some grills will show partial rows and some will not. The effect can be seen in large multiples of grilled stamps. It should be noted that all of the partial grill rows are horizontal except for the Z grill which can have vertical partial rows.

Clark

Looks like I missed the party on this one, since this is the first time I've seen this thread.

I'm not wild about the shape of the grill points here, on either side of the stamp, but as for count - yes, the row of half points is how I would understand the count, and Clark is giving the same explanation of where they come from that Rich Drews has discussed with me on a couple of occasions. We see these on the early grills of 1867-68, far more than the later. I am not aware of them at all for 1869 nor for the Continental grill, but extra rows do exist for the H type grill, though they are not at all common.

Hopefully, this 85B Z-Grill scan will demonstrate the half
row clearly...

Here's an ebay example where both the top and bottom horizontal rows are half points. It is an E grill that has 14 x 16 full points and could fool someone into thinking that it is a 14 x 18 Z grill. This fooling effect is also mentioned in the McClung article.