2 Grills Out Of 70 Stamp Lot.

This is the 2nd and last stamp out of the lot of 3 cent Washington's. I did a second scan and almost missed this one because it was hiding behind a hinge. When I look at the grill there seems to be faint impressions. What's a good way to enhance the impression of the grill to be able to see it fully without damaging the stamp? I read where taking pencil lead and rubbing across the back would do the trick. What do you guys recommend?

Use special lighting techniques. The use of graphite is totally unacceptable to some people, including me. They are only your stamps for a while.

The use of oblique lighting while excluding other light sources will highlight any paper irregularities by creating shadows. The light coming from different directions will produce different results. Experiment with it.

The same technique will also help reveal stamp faults.

Yep. Oblique lighting works as good as anything I have tried so far. Not real easy to do though. Here are a couple examples of what kind of result you can get, a front side (Sc.65) and reverse (Sc.88):

Ooops. That first example was clearly not a Sc.65. Pretty clearly another Sc.88 from a cover.

We have plenty of oblique lighting at the funeral home. Will report my findings. Thanks.

14 rows I'm going with E

H grill (E wasn't used on this stamp)

unless you are talking about the 3c - yes E grill on that one - H grill for the post that started this thread

risny, I say E grill because I counted 14 rows. What is the reason it has to be an H? Just trying to understand. Thanks

No problem, happy to help. The E grill was used on 1867 stamps (designs of 1861-1866). Banknotes, which start in 1870, were only made with H and I grills. H grill generally has 11-13 columns. The image of this stamp is tricky, but probably only 13 columns here. I grills have even fewer columns. So by default it has to be an H grill. There just aren't any other options for 1870 Banknotes.

rlsny, thank you for explaining about the grill and thank all of you for explaining as well.