572 Missing Bird

Here's a recent acquisition which I made through the mail.



Unitrade lists 3 types of #572ii, varying amounts of missing bird and this one is completely missing (which is good).

Although I can't get a closer view of it, the imprint of the missing bird is clearly there, so I was wondering...

Is a colourless impression to be expected in this variety?
Or does it suggest suspicious tampering?

Thanks for your help.

Since the imprint remains, I suspect that the bird was chemically removed. Jerry

The colour would be missing because of an inking issue. There are other Canadian stamps with an impression on paper, but no ink.

The stamp looks OK to me, but hopefully someone who actually has an example will respond.

The stamp was printed by British American Bank Note Co. on its Goebel press using a combination of photogravure and engraving. The missing bird was printed by engraving. On the variety, the outline of the missing bird always appears as an embossing on the stamp.

This suggests that the variety was caused by an inking problem. More precisely, no ink was deposited in this area of the engraved cylinder. This points to a problem with the inking roller that picks up the ink from the ink fountain and deposits it on the cylinder.

Similar varieties are known on some of the 1967 Centennial definitive booklets stamps printed by BABN. For more information, refer to the Centennial Definitives catalogue compiled and published by Robin Harris.

Thanks for that detailed response AdmCol, I learned something.
I have Robin's book and will take another look at it.

Yes, thanks so much, AdmCol. That's exactly what I needed to know. All the best.

Wouldn't it be the opposite, i.e. no trace of the bird? Why would missing ink show "embossing"? As far as I know (and stand to be corrected") It is the presence of ink that gives the raised effect.

I have heard that fakes have been created of this stamp by carefully scratching the bird off. Under a glass this leaves a light shape of the bird where the scraped bird took a thin layer of paper with it.

Does this also mean that you can have a misplaced bird variety? (Like a few mm above the pole.) Just wondering.

Any colour change added can cause a colour shift...it happened lots of times when I was a printer.

Regarding BeeSee's question:

As noted in my original response, the missing bird was printed using engraving. In this printing method, the lines of the design consist of grooves in the cylinder that hold the ink. A characteristic of the engraving process is that the lines of the stamp design are raised above the surface of the paper. The deeper the grooves, the more pronounced the raised effect.

The paper is pressed against the cylinder under great pressure so that it picks up the ink in the grooves. If the ink is missing, the pressure will still push the paper into the grooves. The paper will still be raised where the lines of the stamp design occur, but because there is no ink, what you will see is the design embossed in the paper.

A well known example of the same variety occurs on the 1967 Centennial definitives $1.00 booklet containing the 8c Library stamp.



Like the stamp with the missing bird, this booklet was printed by BABN on its Goebel press. On the 8c Library stamp with the variety, the missing part of the design can be seen embossed in the paper. The cause is the same for both varieties - the inking roller did not deposit ink into the grooves of the cylinder. The reason is explained in greater detail in the Robin Harris Centennial Definitives catalogue.

Another example of the same sort of variety is shown below on the 1937 4c Mufti definitive. A vertical strip is missing on the stamps in the rightmost column.



This stamp was printed by Canadian Bank Note Co. using a sheet-fed rotary press. The missing part of the design is embossed on the paper. The effect is quite striking where the deeper grooves occur (the value tablet, the lines of the oval, and the frame lines), although unfortunately the embossing doesn't show up in the image. The reason for the missing part of the design is quite different in this case. Here, there was a strip of foreign paper covering the vertical strip. The edges of this paper also show up as embossing.

Incidentally, why the term "cylinder" and not "plate" for the BABN stamps? The Goebel press is a web-fed press, and the design for the photogravure and engraved colours are impressed onto a solid cylinder, not a flat plate that is subsequently bent to fit around the printing cylinder of a sheet-fed rotary press.

Regarding Partime's question:

According to the new issue information released by Canada Post, the Pacific Indians costume and thunderbird pair were printed using two-colour photogravure and two-colour engraving. You can see what portion of the Indian costume stamp is printed by engraving from the image of the die proof posted by Library and Archives Canada:

http://data4.collectionscanada.ca/n...G&SECT3=ITLV

The two photogravure colours are red and yellow (but just red on the thunderbird stamp). I'm not sure what the two engraved colours are because the engraving looks to be all the same colour to me. In any event, there could be a colour shift between the photogravure and engraved colours. In fact, this is not uncommon on stamps printed on the Goebel press. However, even if there were two engraved colours, there could be no shift of one relative to the other because both colours would be printed by the same cylinder. So in this case because the bird and the totem pole are both printed by engraving, the bird (or its embossed image) will always be at the same place on top of the totem pole.

Thanks to AdmCol for the very detailed explanation, and love your examples. Cheers to SCF.

AdmCol my friend, are you saying 2 different colours are printed with the SAME cylinder plate...Impossible my friend....First of all if you print the colour red and wipe the plate and print the colour yellow to make an orange bird..The plate does not know where to pick up what colour to print on a piece of paper to make the colour orange..It is printed on 2 separate plates and there in can have a colour shift...That is just my opinion..

Yes, than you AdmCol, great explanation.

I would sure like to see high resolution scans of the embossing effect, especially on the "missing bird" area.

Wert, engraved stamps have been printed using more than one colour on one plate for many years!

Here is a copy of mine. Block of 25, showing location on 3rd column from right edge, 3rd row (pos 28)

Merci Gilles!

wert,

The BABN web-fed Goebel press was capable of printing up to three engraved colours from the same cylinder. All the multi-coloured engraved booklets that BABN printed, including the $1.00 Centennial booklet in my previous post,were printed this way.

The way it was done is as follows:

1. There is an ink fountain for each colour.
2. There is an inking roller for each colour. The roller is routed such that the area corresponding to its colour is raised and the rest is routed away.
3. As the inking roller rotates through the ink fountain, only the raised area picks up ink.
4. The roller deposits the ink on the cylinder. The rotation of the inking roller and cylinder has to be synchronized so that the inking roller deposits its colour on the right area of the cylinder.
5. After the inking rollers deposit their ink on the cylinder, the cylinder rotates until it comes into contact with the web of paper and prints the ink on the paper.

I believe the reason for the the partly missing design on the $1.00 Centennial booklet is as follows. For the 8c Library stamp with the variety, the 8c and 6c stamps alternate around the circumference of the cylinder. The inking roller for the 8c is raised around all the 8c designs on the cylinder but is routed away in the area occupied by the 6c stamp. I think the edge of the raised area on the inking roller corresponding to right side of the 8c stamp (which abuts the 6c stamp on the next booklet on the cylinder) was damaged and could not pick up the ink from the ink fountain.

You may be familiar with the colour "contamination" frequently observed on the 25c 1973 Caricature booklets printed by BABN. I believe this contamination was caused by ink from one inking roller somehow getting into the edges of the area that was supposed to be inked by another roller.

Among Canadian printers, only BABN had this capability of printing several colours from the one engraved cylinder. And only on the Goebel press. Canadian Bank Note, on the stamps it printed using two-colour engraving, could only print one colour at a time. This means CBN had to feed sheets twice through the press, once for each colour. Printing up to three colours with one pass on a web-fed press was much more efficient. The Swedish also operated Goebel presses for a long period time. They printed their booklets the same way BABN did.