From Vol. 22, No. 3 (1996/97)

Stamp Production

by Hans Reiche

The number of CAPEX cover exhibits makes one wonder if stamps are still of interest, instead of postal history. 70% of all exhibits were covers. But here are a few points that may be of interest to those that still collect stamps.

The only information that I can add to the already existing data on stamps is on the "Admiral" issue. Having had the privilege of visiting the Canadian Bank Note Co. a number of times, thanks to George Marler and the incumbent Vice-President at that time, I was able to see for myself how these Admirals were produced. At that time all the artifacts that produced these Admirals were still in the vault of the Bank Note Company. All this was later on destroyed. In his book on the Admirals, Marler describes much of the information that led to the production of these stamps but certain additional data may be of interest to others who had never the opportunity to visit such a manufacturing facility.

As we know, a die had to be cut first to produce an image of the wanted subject. This kind of die was a piece of steel that was first engraved with guiding lines and dots to allow the engraver to enter his information exactly in the right space. The accuracy of the design area is of course very important, because this governs the total space that has to be allotted for the stamp on the actual plate. After the engraved die was completed a proof was taken, often in more than one colour, but a single proof had to be submitted to the Post Office for final approval prior to going ahead with the production of the plate.

Once approval had been given or suggested changes to the die were asked for, the company began to produce the plate by using a transfer roll. These rolls were produced by using the approved die for transferring the information on the die onto the roll. No master die was ever used for this operation. A secondary die was used to avoid any damage to the master die. Damage to a master die would have resulted in major delay of production and extra cost.

The rolls usually contained three to five subjects so that any wear of one subject could be changed to another subject on the roll. Each subject was to rep-resent exactly the same detail as the rest. But as Marler correctly outlines, often a single plate may have two different types. That is because two diff-erent subject on the roll were used. Not each roll subject is exactly the same in details as some others on the same roll. Each of these rolls used weigh about two pounds, indicating the strength of them. For some values such as those that required a large number of plates, as for the 2 cents, more than one transfer roll was used for the production of such a large number of plates.

In order to assure accurate alignment of these rolls when transferring the information from the roll to the steel plate, each roll had a line engraved on its side that guided the roll to exactly the place on the steel plate.

The steel plate had to be prepared first before the roll could be entered. The plate was marked by guide lines and dots so that the roll could be entered with its guide line on the side. Not always was the roll entered correctly and this resulted in jumps on the plate where one or more stamps may be out of line with the rest. Entering was done from the bottom up. That is the bottom row, stamps number 91 to 100, were entered first.

Unfortunately, some difficulties were encountered after some of the dyes became unavailable for prin-ting. These dyes came originally from IG Farben Industries in Germany. Dyes used later on created some printing problems. This can often be noted on complete sheets where the bottom row of stamps is smudged, not sharp or even missing colour. Marler suggested that lack of colour on some stamps came from poorly or incomplete transfer entry. This may be true for some stamps but most of these problems were caused by inking problems with these new dyes.

To overcome this problem the lathework was introduced that allowed proper wiping of the plate, especially at the bottom. This technique reduced much of the problem until such time as new printing methods were available. Once all subjects were transferred to the steel plate, either 100, 200 or 400 stamps for the total plate, a proof was taken. It is interesting that all such proofs originated from flat plates and not the curved plates that were used most of the time.

These curved plates were called cylinders. Two such curved plates were used for printing on the press, but before the company could produce stamps another approval was needed. Proofs were again submitted to the Post Office. Sometimes when these proofs arrived, the authorizing person was not available and thus approval for a particular plate could not be given right away. But the requirement for stamps was such that verbal approval had to be given before the actual approval was given. This resulted in stamps being issued from a plate that had not yet officially been approved by signing the proof. This fact has caused some writers and collectors to doubt that certain early cancels, prior to the official approval, are genuine cancel dates. Both Admirals and Queen Victoria Numerals show such incidents. In one case the Postmaster General was in Paris for a meeting and returned only after three weeks. The proof landed on his desk for approval. This has led to some Admiral stamps being cancelled prior to the approval date.

The perforation of Admirals was fairly constant but as Marler points out variations from perforation 12 can be found within a limit of 11.75 to up to 12.4. These are not due to moisture shrinkage of paper. The paper varied from a thick to a thin paper and no special precaution was made to keep all papers exactly the same. The paper was purchased by weight and length, not thickness. Therefor changes in thickness must be expected on all values. The report of a 4 on very thin paper with a price tag of a few hundred dollars must be viewed as strange, as no other report has turned this up. Of course the so-called thin papers are an exception, such as the 2, 5 and 7 cents. The last one was, I believe, first found by Maresch.

Another interesting fact is that many plates were used more than once. This can be noted by the change in the manufacturing number in the inscriptions. Some plates were used three and even four times after refurbishing the plate. The refurbishing of the plate means that the plate was cleaned, recut slightly by an acid solution, and sometimes retouched or even re-entered. Therefore this is the reason why descriptions of retouches and re-entries by various writers cannot be complete. Most of the information was taken from the actual plate proofs and as these were often changed, the varieties that exist cannot be found on the actual proofs. From the listed varieties in various books only half can be found to exist and the majority can only be located with luck.

The reuse of plates also caused one other problem for collectors. That is that early plates may appear again after later plates have already been issued. Take for example the 2 red, Plate 44 was issued around the beginning of May 1913. Then, 25 plates were issued until March 1914 when the plate came back after such a long time. This time refurbished.

The above just gives you some new ideas to work on if you are an Admiral collector.

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Updated: October 29, 1997