Sc806 2 Cent Adams

In the Scott catalog it mentions " Recut at top of head, PL 22156 U.L. 3 "

Can someone explain this ? PL - plate no. im guessing. U.L.?? Recut - ?? refers to plate being recut?

Upper Left position 3 was recut.

thank you

When stamps are printed, the printing sheet is cut into some number of pieces. For sheet stamps if cut into two panes (the size of a sheet of stamps sold at the post office), then they are labeled Left or Right (L or R). When the printing sheet is cut into four panes for sale at the post office they are labeled UL, UR, LL, LR for upper left, upper right, lower left and lower right. On modern material sometime the position of the pane in the sheet is shown in the margin selvage with a diagram showing the number of panes cut from the printing sheet with the particular pane highlighted grey.

On the pane sold at the post office, the positions are numbered from top left as number 1, the next one to the right is number 2 and so on to the end of the row. Then it returns to the leftmost stamp in the next row lower. That could be number 6, or 11 for example depending then number of stamp images in a row.

Thus Pl 12345 UL pos.1 is the upper left pane of stamps from the sheet printed from and with plate number 12345, upper left most stamp.

Below are panes with the diagram showing the pane position as it appeared in the printed sheet. The diagrams are in the selvage under stamp position 18.



The Polar Bear pane above is the dead center pane of the 15 (3x5) made from the printing sheet.

Below the UPU pane is the lower right of the nine panes (3x3) made from the printing sheet.

ParcelPostGuy, Good explanation.

Thank you all. Very instructive and detailed. One last - the "top of head" reference. Sorry.....

Okay, I see what I missed. The recut at the top of the head. The stamp has a portrait of Adams' head. The "top of his head" means the area of the design portrait which would be where the top of the head is--in other words, not his chin or ear or collar.

When printing plates are made. The engraver makes a master die. That is hardened and used to make a transfer roll. The transfer roll thus has a reverse image of the die pressed into it when soft. The the metal is hardened. The transfer roll (or rolls as more than one can be made and used) is then used to put each stamp image, again in a reverse of the transfer roll image, into the printing plate. One application of the transfer roll for each image on the plate. That guy who uses the transfer roll to make a plate is called a sideographer. He is human and as with all us humans he is not perfect and makes mistakes. His mistakes can cause a number of plate varieties such as short transfer (thin missing part of the design top or bottom or both), double (or more) transfers (pressed the transfer roll more than once in one area's image), shifted transfer and so on. Now if he really messes up a transfer from the transfer roll he will pound the bad transfer out and replace it with a good transfer. Yes he can because the printing plate's steel is still soft. However in rare cases the guy will just cut by hand one or two lines into the design to fix the design impression he just made. Remember he is the sideographer not the delicate and skilled fine line engrave. So his lines "recut" may look gross and out of place compared to what should be there. I am not sure we would want to see what a prinint plate made by an engraver look like. Both jobs require skill and artistry or their own.

Not done yet.

So the sideographer made a wonderful 400 image printing plate, hardened it and gave it to the printing pressman. The pressman then used the heck out of the plate for tens or hundreds of thousands of impressions. Ink and paper friction will wear even hardened steel and as it wears, away goes some fine design elements. Or oops something fell on the plate and damaged some fine lines. Out comes the sharp pointy instruments and someone without the wonderful fine line control of an artistic engraver "recuts" the worn, damaged or missing line(s).

In both recut case scenarios, before or during printing, the wonderfully gross recuts standout from normal when printed on to the stamp paper and are honored with catalog listing if they are drastic enough. Otherwise they just get listed in plate variety books or journal articles, if at all.

Thus, recut at the top of the head, means look at the top of the head area to find some obvious recut lines or design elements.

Parcelpostguy's story in pictures here,
one has to scroll to get the whole process.

https://goscf.com/t/61277&whichpage=2#529390 br /

Very detailed. Good. I presumed that was the meaning but needed confirmation.... Thanks. Now I'm going to see if I can find some pictures of recut vs original - just to compare.

https://goscf.com/t/57739&whichpage=23

That thread gets involved with all sorts of plate differences. But page 23 which is the link has pretty pictures.

Now one of these days I need to photograph my "favorite" DT (double transfer) and Recut, three cent parcel post, Q3 Pl 6257, LL positions 6 (DT) and 7 (DT and recut). If one has the side plate block of 8 for the LL pane ("THREE" above 6257) you will have both positions on the top two stamps of the block. Scott lists both.

Now my all time favorite transfer issue is on the 1 cent 1869 issue, right plate position 1. Sadly the only time I saw that for sale my bid of over $300 was blown out of the water on ebay. Scott listed.

Beautiful, tks. One the hunt for pics for the 2 Cents Adams.... Question - as mentioned fairly new to this. In the thread you just posted for me, they mention abbreviation "EC". Does that refer to the letters E & C in onE and cEnt or one CEnt ?? Or something else?

Capitol letters EC would refer to the letter E and C somewhere they appear in that order. There it would be ON"E C"ENT.

Other example could be "Pos" or "ost" or "tag" or "age" describing an area of the word "Postage" in the design.

Tks again. Glad I asked!