Large Queen #27 Guide Line Plate Variety

This is what appears to be a guide line in the lower left of stamp. Running up through S of SIX, through the 6 and into the oval and shading lines above. I have been informed that it is a constant variety.

Watermark, I am not used to seeing guide lines through the stamp. Was this normal at one time? I have a fairly large collection of guide lines on modern stamps, but they are all either to the left or to the right, or above or below the design!

Peter

When they laid the die into the metal plates they used various dots and lines to help align the images on the plate as the die was rocked into the steel plate an image at a time. The plates were usually 100 to 200 images. Usually the lines were hidden by the image when they rocked the die into the plate. Sometimes the plates were not prepared correctly and stray lines show up. If a mistake was bad enough it would be burnished from the plate. Sometimes they would not remove the whole mistake and an odd line shows up on stamps. I have seen a number of these and sometimes they are curved lines instead of straight. They also might be associated with guide dots. They can be found quite often on engraved stamps. These should not be confused with re-entries which are caused by re-rocking a die into the plate to repair or strengthen an image and could cause a doubling of some lines in the image of the stamp.

Watermark, very interesting! I did not know this.
The stamps I collect are the US Transportation Coils, and some of these were printed on the Cottrell presses. The stamps were engraved, and the engravers did use plenty of dots and lines. I call them LOM's or Layout Markings.
These LOM's were supposed to be removed, but a lot of them escaped!

Peter

Even before drum/roller presses..They used old school equipment as shown in the pictures below..I have used every one of these pieces of equipment when I was training to be a printer/lithographer.




These Linotype machines had a keyboard to produce slugs (printable type)...They used molten lead to create the slugs as shown below which were .918 inches tall.



For quicker set up we had previously created individual slugs that could be use over and over again..They were taken fro a tray as shown below.





The final step was to add design blocks as seen in older stamps that could be added with the words to form a complete design...They, back then might use a platen press as shown below.



You would add ink to the top plate and as the rollers came up, it would pick up and ink the slugs/blocks for printing..Each individual sheet was hand fed to the print area and it would close and make and impression..as it opened you had to remove it and feed another one before it closed...Back then when you had stamps that had a raised desigh/numbers/words etc. we had to spray them with a powder that chemically reacted to the wet ink to raise the affected area..

I love seeing this, Wert! When I graduated from HS, my best friend's dad (who was old enough to be our grandfather) had almost the exact same printing press from his days as a printer in his basement. He had drawer files lining the basement full of all kinds of dies. I got to print my graduation announcements and cards on this press. It was a blast to use!

Brian

Fun fact, apologize for being a bit off topic…
Ever wonder where the terms 'upper case' and lower case' came from when discussing the whether or not letter are capitalized? These were the locations of the type cases (drawers) used to hold the movable type for letterpress printing. Capital letters were kept in the upper cases and non-capitals kept in the lower cases.
don

"And now you know ... the REST of the story" :)

51studebaker...Impressive...

Wert: one of my jobs roughly 60 years was melting down what I believe were zinc plugs on Saturday mornings at the local newspaper office. Some days my brain is like mud but "linotype" sure sticks in my mind.

Watermark: great image of Canada Scott#27

Wert, thanks for showing those pics and your personal
experiences in the printing trade.

cynical..So you have had first hands on experience with slugs...I High School we used to trow water into the lead pots that eventually became slugs...You know what happen when you add cold water to hot lead..Hey, but it was fun.

Rileysan,,,You make me feel old...haha

lithograving...Thanks old buddy..Glad you enjoyed it...

I just found this 2c Large Queen. It appears to have a guide line at the left, with a couple of dots in the center left.

cynical..Are you sure t was zinc..or was it lead as I used..

Robert

Bee See: What type of paper does your 2 cents Large Queen have?

Here it is Jogil. It is definitely not laid paper . It has horizontal grain as it curls that way when I do the "breath" test.

Perforation is 11.94 x 11.94 on my LQ/SQ gauge.