Surprising Find, A Thread Embedded In The Gum Of #319

Perhaps not surprising to the more experienced. I've had this stamp for ages and never noticed it! I've not been one to be overly concerned with gum condition in the past.

nice, I have never seen it before this post, that makes 2 LOL

I believe that the gum was applied at the time using broad paint brushes.

Rather than a "thread," this is just a portion of one of the bristles in the brush.

Jim

A brush wouldn't have a twisted fiber for a bristle I don't believe. When I first saw it I thought hair but on magnification one can see it is a twisted fiber. It's really fine, so maybe from a piece of silk? workman's bandana?

Perhaps horsehair, twisted due to the brushing action...
Don

If someone is painting on glue with a brush, almost anything could have fallen into the glue vat.

Why is that surprising? When I go through a box of new (meaning old) stuff, my tongs are used for plucking hairs onto the floor rather than picking up stamps.

Yep, I think it was a very different manufacturing process 120 yrs ago, big contrast with the hermetic sterile process of today.

The stamp looks regummed. This is the first I have heard of these stamps having original adhesive hand applied. Really?

Yes things can contaminate the gum prior to and during application. Now while interesting, same on the paper side before printing would be a very nice find.

For me the photos are not clear enough to answer OG or regummed but there looks to be some ink offset on the gum. Look for small "gum balls" on the fibers at the tips of the perforations Philystamper and if there it is a regumming.

As to goodies which don't belong, captured flying insects on either side are my favorites.

As phily said , it could be a silk thread? Spun during manufacture. That would explain the twisting?

Looking at it under magnification you can see that the tips of the perforations don't have gum on them, you can also see the occasional fiber sticking out without any gum on it on the perfs. Where the stamp is creased there is a little section of the fiber out of the gum like a tiny bridge. Looking at it I wondered if the tips where disappearing into the paper. Finding a stamp with a bug in it would be very surprising, Or the silhouette of one in the ink.

"Good" regummers often use source stamps which require touching up hinge marks/thins. They simply mask the perfs and use a very fine airbrush to mist spray the gum, so the perfs tips would be normal looking. That said, I am not sure that a "good" regummer would be spending time on this stamp. The gum does look disturbed and my first thought was that something softened the gum (post production) and picked up the hair in the process.
Don

I really am interested in how the gum was applied to these issues. Can somebody point me to production info regarding this?

Thank You

From the PF:







https://www.philatelicfoundation.or...en-regummed/