Double Watermark - Is It Possible?

I was preparing some pages of stamps to sell at my stamp club tonight, when, while trying to identify this common Argentinian stamp, I found something curious.
The watermark determines which issue it is, whether it is wmk. 90 or wmk. 288, both versions of the RA in Sun.
But when I put this little guy in the watermark fluid, I could swear I'm seeing the circles of the sun overlapping.
The scan of the back of the stamp does not show the watermark with the naked eye.




This is how the actual watermarks are supposed to look.





But in the tray, it seems the circles of the suns are almost overlapping, like there are twice as many as there should be.
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get a good picture of it (I'll keep trying) and photoshop has yielded no miracles from the scan.

But has anyone ever heard of this before? Double watermarks? And is it prevalent on this stamp?
Needless to say, Senor Sarmiento will not be attending club with us tonight!

Now a double impression watermark would be super cool. Not sure on the process of watermarking paper , but assumeing there must have been some tool to impress the imagine it is certainly possible it was dobble rolled or maybe even an overlap of sorts. You can try a dab of ronsonal on scanner bed with with solid black background and decent amount of pressure. It worked once for me but had to do 3-4 passes to get varying degrees of saturation.

When the the paper pulp or "stuff" is poured onto a brass screen with a design impressed or embossed into it, the paper will build up more in those ares. When the paper drys you have a watermarked paper. Now, if you had a long strip of this brass screen and it had to overlap than this could certainly happen. In your particular case though I couldn't say for certain but it is certainly a possibility

Tried the watermark fluid on the scanning bed, but no joy.
Several more attempts with my camera finally yielded this. And I have to say, I'm definitely seeing overlapping circles in the tray.
See if you can see them in this shot.



Now that your eyes have adjusted, I'll show you where I see them.



Well? Am I crazy? Am I rich?
Hopefully no the the first, probably no to the second.

Ok, I'm obsessing about this, but here's one last shot at it before I go and do something useful with my day.
I've played with colour filters to eliminate some distractions. Pretty sure you'll be able to see what I see much clearer now. Well, sort of sure.

Lot's of views on this one, but no comments. Does no one see what I see?

All circles (sun) included the letters RA?
And these letters, are in horizontal or vertical direction on the stamp?

Hi jorgesurcl.
I can make out something in each circle, though much of it isn't clear. In one circle I can make out an R.
Have you heard of this happening on South American stamps before?

I have not heard anything like double watermark in these Argentine stamps.

The so-called Dandy Roll is a cylinder with the watermark design made of thin metal wires affixed to the cylinder :



The still wet reel of paper goes under the Dandy Roll which then imprint by pressure on the paper the watermark design :



There are 4 main kinds of paper with watermark for your stamp (1c. Sarmiento) :

1) Imported uncoated paper. Wmk.90. RA always vertical. Litho.
Printed in 1935, 1939, 1941 and 1945.
2) Imported uncoated paper. Wmk.288 (straight rays). RA always horizontal. Litho
Printed in 1948
3) Imported coated (chalky) paper. Wmk.90. RA always vertical. Typogr.
Printed in 1939, 1941 and 1952
4) National uncoated paper. Wmk.90. Litho
Printed : 1953 (RA horizontal) and 1957 (RA vertical)

Here's the Wtm.288 (straight rays), horizontal RA:
With red arrows I show what appear to be other circle (Sun), but don't have RA



Here's Wtm.90, with vertical RA. The blue circles show what appear to be circles of watermark, but aren't. They are the spaces between the SUN+RA :



Your stamp :



The watermark : RA horizontal. I think it is Wtm.288
And the watermark is right (not double) because don't have new RA.
I think the new circles are the spaces between SUN+RA

Outstanding display jorgesurcl!

See, Kirk -- I didn't say "me too".

k

James, there is a collector who specializes in Argentine watermarks, paper, and fly-specking. I can't remember if he is a member of SCF. I don't recall running into him in at least a year.

Either way, I will look for his contact info tomorrow. I would suggest you contact him directly and ask him to chime in. He is very friendly and exceptionally knowledgeable and VERY VERY dedicated to searching/researching. His threads on these topics are like an encyclopedia that run dozens of pages with hundreds of scans of watermarks//paper/varieties and fly-specking.

That description sounds like Rein Bakhuizen van den Brink. His website contains large amounts of info on many different philatelic topics. Here's the link to his Argentina page.

http://www.galeoptix.nl/fila/argent...arg_fila.htm

A few thousand forum posts on this English-language board for Argentine stamps:

http://foro.filateliaargentina.com....um.php?f=137

Antonio Rubiera also does huge amounts of work on these stamps. Here's his blog specific to this series.

http://arg3551.blogspot.com/

He has compiled a massive amount of information into a number of PDF-format books which can be downloaded.

http://www.somestamps.com/publicati...ications.htm

Ryan

Antonio is the one I was referring to, but both are great info sources.

I don't think they would mind at all if you asked them.

Thanks Ryan, for doing the link compilations!

James, please let us know if you get a reply.

k

I want to clarify, that I lean toward agreeing with Jorgesurcl's assessment. The human is a very very good at "smoothing" and "filling in". And since the Argentine watermarks can sometimes be "spotty", it's really easy to "see" circles and letters in the gap between the RA circles -- especially because of the way the rays are arranged.

Thanks for the detailed response, jorgesurcl. And everyone else too.
I also think you are on to something here, the lines you trace make sense. But I have to admit, without them, I'm still seeing circles where there shouldn't be.
Perhaps it's easier (and better) to be objective from a distance.
I did understand how watermarks were made, which is why I was so surprised when I saw (what I thought I saw).
When I've got more time this weekend I'll look at it again, as well as check out these websites.
I may still get in touch with your experts, might be interesting to hear their opinions.