Could Someone Provide A Link To Plating 101?

Members,
I keep reading detailed references of plating stamps on many
threads. Hoping someone can offer a link to a beginner.
Bob

What are you plating? As an example, this is the standard work on plating the 1d black

https://www.spink.com/nissen-reconstructions.aspx

This page is useful for U.S. Scott #10 and #11's. The entire site is very good actually. But, it's just one tool for plating those stamps.
http://www.uspcs.org/the-1851-1860-...amp-plating/

Hi GeoffHa,
I am not trying to plate anything yet. Looking for some basic
information to help understand it in general.
Thanks for your post, I will check it out!
Bob

Hi stampcrow,
I was answering GeoffHa's question when your post came in.
Thank you, I will give this a read as well.
Bob

Wow,
I have read these links. Hat's off to Dr. Chase. I don't
think that I will be a master, or even close on this subject
anytime soon. I know now L is for left & R is for right side
of a plate. The study of it all is certainly for scholars!
I will look forward to learning more .Thanks for all of your help! Knowledge is cool!

I've wanted the same thing - a Plating 101. There are indeed some great threads on the subject here.

You might want to get Loran French's Encyclopedia of Plate Varieties. Although it is not per se a plating book, there is a lot of information useful in that regard. Also I found Williams' Fundamentals of Philately worthwhile.

Bob,

To get fully immersed in plating the 1-cent and 3-cent US stamps of 1851 to 1857, you would need reference books such as the Mortimer Neinken book for the 1-cent stamps or the Carroll Chase book for the 3-cent stamps. There are a couple of outstanding web sites below that will help a lot, but the positions aren't 100 percent represented:

http://www.slingshotvenus.com/Frank...hv_Main.html

http://www.stamps4collectors.com/in...cphotos.html

Q/ What would a Plating 101 Tutorial say?

AFAIK, the only route to plating any issue is to:

1) acquire multiples (pairs, blocks, strips);

2) examine them for minute differences (eg, a thickened this, or thinned that);

3) develop a nomenclature for those differences;

4) find occasions where the same stamp appears in different multiples;

5) use the overlapping multiples to re-construct the plate.

Some helpful hints might include:

re #1: substitute "acquire high quality high resolution scans of multiples".

re #2: read existing plating studies to learn which differences were more/less useful.

re #3: copy someone else's nomenclature.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Double Wow,
I browsed both of your links. "To get one's feet wet, reconstructing the right 3 columns of plate 3 left might be a good start." Nice information. It will take some time to even come close to
comprehending it at all. Very interesting!
Thanks

ikeyPikey & thanks to ,CC
Thanks for your notes. You said aquire multiples. If I have many covers between husband & wife over several years NYC to Prov. RI 1850's &60's
with other cancels. IE. "The Hunt Collection". 176 covers, might they be from many of the same plates?
Mr.George Hunt was an attorney. Could he have purchased multiples over the years instead of going to the post office to send one letter at a time?

Bob,

Mr. Hunt very well could have purchased large blocks of the 3-cent imperforates at one time, so some of the stamps in the cover collection could have come from the same "sheet," not to be confused with "plate."

I recommend you get familiar with basic plate identification. I wrote the article on the USPCS web site (below) that covers this. Click on the links in the table and you'll begin to see that isolating what "plate" a stamp was printed from is not that hard with a little practice. Most of the hyperlinked images are from stamps in my collection, so I can send higher resolution scans if you'd like to see them.

http://www.uspcs.org/the-1851-1860-...2%A2-plates/

The post below is an example of basic plate identification (plate 4):

https://goscf.com/t/46810#401401

Hi again CC,
Thanks, I will have to look at that link closer in the AM. I did say in an earlier thread "I have taken algebra and don't think I had as much trouble. I do see the difference between the two. By the way, Pie R squared. Wrong! Pies are round , cakes are square! An old math joke. My father was the head of the proof dept. at RI Hospital Trust. He couldn't come home at night until the the books settled. Way before computers."
I was invited in an earlier thread to share the Hunt Collection with you folks.
Stay tuned,
Bob

IkeyPikey has it 100% if you have to start from scratch, and that is what Dr. Chase, Ashbrook and Neinken had to do to provide us today with these wonderful references. Lucky for us that they were able to gather the multiples that were necessary to map the plate for us, so we can follow. It's nice to have multiples but that stuff isn't available to the every day collector/philatelist, but one can still start plating your own material without multiples because of their efforts.
Ray

Thanks to you all,

Quite a complicated study. Got to read some more today.
I now have a minimal understanding of the concept of plating.
Still I could not apply anything I have read so far to actually
being able to plate anything!

I did not know there was such a tie between plating and
the detailed timeline of the release of a stamp to the public.
That taught me why a date on a cover or postmark is so helpful. It would, as a start, direct one to that particular plate associated with the release date.

Before today I did not associate references of cut lines
with the re-engraving or cleaning up of a worn out plate.
Solid lines = never recut, Dot and dash lines = always recut,
Dash lines = often recut, Dot lines = rarely recut.
It was like being a boy scout as a child and trying to understand morse code!

Bob

ray.mac is correct that I took "plating" to mean re-constructing the plate from the stamps whereas, today, plating might simply mean finding the plate position of a single stamp from existing resources.

Q/ So what does "stamping" mean?

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey