#94 Triple Grill On Ebay With Cert.

So, how does this happen? This is a #94 with three grill imprints on the back. The sheet was fed through three times? Some other bizarre occurrence? Have you grill experts seen this multiple times? How rare is it?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mr-Fancy-Ca...AOSwh2xYB1vt

Barring a weird paper fold, a triple grill would only be caused by the sheet of stamps being fed three separate times through the grilling roller. No doubt a rare occurrence; maybe operator was lax or missed a night's sleep?
Don

Reference: Article - Triple Grill Varieties - Author(s): Leonard S. Sheriff, William K. Herzog
US Classics Society website - http://chronicle.uspcs.org/pdf/Chro...110/7881.pdf

Just read the download..I learned and I am blown away by your knowledge Don, and they say stamp collecting is dying. Triple grills..wow.

Thank you but I am only a hobbyist; I recalled reading on this issue but had to verify before posting.

But we do indeed have other true experts/scholars who have studied stamp production and the associated history. I find that hanging around people who are smarter than myself sometimes results in me learning.
Don

Since one is a split grill, it would only have to go through twice.

There are actually four separate grill impressions here: the split grill (left and right edges) and two overlapping grills in the center (the "two full grills plus a split grill" variety mentioned in the Chronicle article cited by Don), so the sheet had to be fed through the grilling device three separate times.

This sheet was probably the first grill print of the day, and it was used to line up the grill correctly for the rest of the run.

Thanks for bringing this subject up. Later this month at Chicagopex, I am supposed to sit down with Ron Burns to compare notes on our studies of grills and grilling. I suspect that Herzog's speculation about how triple grills (or doubles for that matter) are formed is not quite right. Ron can help me think it through. The crux of the issue is whether or not the path of the grill bed beneath the roller was one-direction only or capable of movement forward and backward. If it is the latter, as I suspect, then there is no reason to suppose that multiple grilling like this triple required three complete passes. It is more likely that if an operator saw that a sheet was not well registered as it was passing beneath, then they might attempt to back it out and try again with a shift in registration. Viola - a triple grill, but only on part of the sheet.

Interesting line of thought, essayk.

essayk, I will be working at David Grossblat's booth at CHICAGOPEX if you want to say hello.

Steel's US Pat. No. 70,147 (granted 1867; likely filed 1-2 years earlier) for grilled stamps does not specify the type of mechanism to be used for "embossing" what we now call a grill, "as they may be of any convenient character known to mechanics." Have any embossing machines, or descriptions of them, survived?

The Steel patent can be read at the following link. Google used machine OCR to generate the online text, which is peppered with errors. Use the "Download PDF" link at the top right to obtain a copy of the original.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US70147A/en

Chris

I have a print-off of Steel's patent specifications in a binder with my other patent studies. Those things are immense fun.

In Brookman's discussion of grilling (19th Cent, vol II), he gave a brief account of what happened to the grill roller after it was taken out of service for stamps. He got it from either Wiley or Stevenson before him. That is the only discussion of the grilling device based on actual material that I have ever seen. However, Ron Burns and Rich Drews have studied a full sheet (two panes) in the Drews collection and have tested out various configuration theories based on that and other material. Their conclusions about how the roller/s was/were ground and how it must have been positioned to produce the effects on the sheet, are advancing our understanding of the mechanics necessarily in play. Stay tuned.

Additionally, J. N. Luff, "The Postage Stamps of the United States" (1902), starting at p. 97, has an extensive description. Google Books has scanned it:

https://books.google.com/books?id=L...MAAJ&pg=PA97

Item sold for $355.