When Perforating Wheels Have A Mind Of Their Own

Examples of what I believe are perforating wheels coming loose while the sheet of paper is being fed through the machine.

As the wheels move across the mounting rod, the result is diagonal perforations on the stamp, either vertical or horizontal (or both, on a really bad day at the printing factory).

Jim

Wow very interesting

A few from my collection:

Hi James,

Is there any way this sort of thing could be paper slippage? I have no knowledge of the mechanical workings of a perforating machine so thought I'd ask.

Hi Bobby,

I'm pretty sure that these things happened when the perforating wheel came loose, rather than when a paper miss-feed event occurred, but I'm not an expert here.

Jim

JamesDrummond: As you said, the ones that you show on one side only (horizontal or vertical) that is not parallel are from one perforating wheel that loosened on its shaft and slipped. | / or | \ or / | or \ | etc.

revenuecollector: The first one that you show appears to have been shifted to the left when fed into the perforator. A paper misfeed would show the perforations on both horizontal (or vertical) sides at the same angle parallel to each other and at the same distance from each other as being off and going through the design. / / or \ \ or | | etc.

revenuecollector: The second one that you show appears to be from the perforator wheels being set apart more than usual so that a wider stamp results which means that the other stamps on its right and left sides may have resulted in narrower stamps than usual. || ||

I would agree with Mr. Drummond. If the paper had slipped during the perforating process both horizontal or both vertical rows would be an at angle. The only other way the perfs could be at angle would be due to a foldover which was perforated and then unfolded. If this were so there should be evidence of a crease in the paper or possibly some portion of the design missing.

The perforating machines used on first issue revenues were from Europe, and few people here knew how to adjust them properly. In addition, there were 10 different sizes of first issues, so changes were being made regularly to at least some of the machines. Made life difficult for them but great for collectors.

Couldn't this occur if the sheet was not completely flat when it was fed into the perforating machine? If the sheet was completely flat, you would see parallel misperforation. But if you consider the third dimension couldn't the shifted perfs result when the sheet flattened out? That is the paper shifted left to right as the paper was pushed flat by operation of the wheel on the perforator. Like crooked seam on clothing when the fabric doesn't go into the sewing machine flat?

I agree with the line that SPQR is taking, each of these examples comes from an outer row, which looks more like the edge of the sheet of paper buckling than a machine part loosening.

Each perforating wheel had a stripper bar to make sure that the paper sheet was down flat and would not be lifted up and taken up and around the perforating wheel as the paper sheet was being perforated.

So if this is caused by a loose wheel, then wouldn't BOTH the wheel with the perforating pins AND the wheel with the receiving holes have to come lose together and slide off their rods while still making nice holes?

I recently purchased an accumulation of first issues on document including several dozen cdvs. The amount of poorly perforated revenues astounds me. There is a much much higher percentage of those than what you typically find off paper. My theory is poorly centered/perforated copies were rarely removed and saved. I never considered it before but it is very striking.

OK Southpaww, I'll bite. What is a cdv? I looked at the glossary and it is not there,

Peter

Keep looking, there are a lot around off paper as well.

Hi Peter. CDV stands for Carte de Visite if I remember correctly.