I Would Like To Know A Little More About Grills.

hi to all

i just would appreciate to know a little more about grills.
i have some 3 cent stamps with grills.

i have been looking today and the term point up and points down.
i am not sure what it means.

i would appreciate a better description about the term.

thanks

dan

The grill is basically an array of indentations made into the paper, most of the time by a roller. The grilling device may be a "male grill" or a "female grill".

The direction the "points" of the grill determine whether "points up" or "points down". That is looking at the stamp face up.

I defer to these 2 sites for a much better and quite thorough explanation and pictures:

http://www.1847usa.com/Grills.htm
http://www.theswedishtiger.com/usstamps/

Kim

That's great information Kim thanks for that mate

One aspect of grilled stamps that I am still unsure of are the ridges. Does anyone have a grilled stamp with either clear vertical or horizontal ridges? If so, please post a photo if possible.

Marty

thanks for the help.

i just noticed a statement about grill up and down and was not sure.
i found that I have 5 3 cent grills

i will have to look at them a bit harder

dan

I am also trying to learn more about Grills, I have a George Washington 3 Cent Stamp and can not determine what kind of Grill it has, even when expanding the photo. I have info as to what each letter grill looks like and the points on them, but I still cant see it. Would anyone be willing to look at it to determine the type??
Thank you in advance.

i also need some more help.

when you measure the grill size is it different when grills are points up then from points down?

thanks dan

For excellent info on grills, see the following link:

http://www.1847usa.com/Grills.htm

There is an easy to read chart on all US stamps with grills. You will note, for example, that only 5 grilled stamps have points up. These are Scott #79,80,81,82 and 83. All others are points down. The chart also includes measurements in mm and the number of points per grill type.

Marty

LONEDAN I didn't reply to your specific questions on points up and down. The measurements of the up and down are different. As to how they look different, the easiest way to "see" the difference is this: on up points, the center of each little "waffle" square was pressed upward which produced raised grills and down points were pressed downward producing depressed grills. On some stamps with down points, one can often see on the face of the stamp an "x" that did not get inked by a canceling device.

I hope this helps a little,
marty

I have checked out this site and have compared pictures of grills from various other sites but with my photo I can not see the grill too well. Does anyone want to take a look at it for me?

AZstamper. Can you scan it at at least 1600 and play with the brightness and contrast till you have a scan that shows the grills as best as you can get. Then post it and I'll have a look at it.

btw, welcome to the forum.
marty

Welcome to Stamp Community Forum, AZStamper!

If the grill is not too weak, you can try the following simple trick to determine points up or down.

Take a piece of aluminum foil (larger than stamp), place it over the stamp, and gently rub with your fingertip (not with your fingernail, you don't want to flatten the grill points). If points are up, they will make an impression into the foil. If you don't see anything, then flip the stamp over and repeat; if you start seeing the points, then it's points down.

It doesn't always work, but does work fairly well once you get the right "touch".

Meanwhile, feel free to post the pic; make sure high resolution and high contrast, as per Marty's instructions. Also, provide pics of both front and back. There is a file size limit of 90kb. So you will either need to use another file host like photobucket, or you will need to trim your scan -- we only need to see the grill part, not the entire stamp.

k

OK let me work on getting the image resolution, Im going to have to email it to a friend because I am not sure how to set the resolution on it. Thank you both....

OK I found out how to lower the size and increase the resolution now I am trying to post the photo and it is not giving me the icon to upload it??

At the bottom (not top) of your post editing window, you should see a green camera icon. Use that. If you still can't find it, post again and I'll take a screen snapshot.

OK I finally figured it out, here is the photo, thank you all too!