Piedmont 150 plate scratch(es) progress

[Pat R]

Originally Posted by wvu_class_of_2001

Was at a card show yesterday and picked up a P150 that has a back scratch. I’ll get it scanned and posted in the next few days. In the meantime, the blog post below has my video where I show it. Hopefully it’s a new discovery!

CARD SHOW ACQUISITIONS: PLANO CARD SHOW 6/10/18

Thanks for the video link Kin.

There are five different confirmed Covaleski scratches and the one
you picked up at the show is one of them.

Covaleski Group.jpg

Yours is the bottom scratch of a triple Covaleski vertical scratch.

Covaleski-1,3,5.jpg

[Beansballcardblog]

Well dang! Ah well, it's going to be tough to find new ones. Thanks for the note!

-kin

Originally Posted by Pat R

Thanks for the video link Kin.

There are five different confirmed Covaleski scratches and the one
you picked up at the show is one of them.

Attachment 319443

Yours is the bottom scratch of a triple Covaleski vertical scratch.

Attachment 319444

[Rhotchkiss]

This is currently on ebay (not mine). I am sure you are aware of it, but I figured it cant hurt to pass this on as part of the plate scratch project.

The picture is poor (again, its on ebay) but the scratch runs from above the A in "Ball" down to the right (through the "m" in Piedmont) and leaves the card between the bottom right corner and the "VA"

[SetBuilder]

The reason they appear only on the 150 cards is because Knapp and Pancoast were finally granted a patent in Feb. 1910 that finally fixed a major defect in the lithographic printing presses at ALC.

The blue lines on the cards are called gear streaks. They occur due to uneven pressure on the rubber rollers of the printing press.

The T206 cards were printed using a "web" (meaning paper roll) offset lithography press. This was new technology at the time, replacing the old sheet fed presses. Allowing for greater production numbers.

Because they were printed on an offset press, the cards never came in contact with the metal printing plate at all. The image was transferred to the card via rubber roller.


(In this simplified diagram, the ink gets transferred from the printing plate, to a rubber "blanket" roller, and then to the card.)


(CMYK printing for T-206. First the black border and name. Then yellow, cyan and magenta. Then the back in blue.)

The problem at the time was that the rubber rollers were made of pure rubber (instead of a harder, more durable synthetic material), which didn’t hold up well to high production numbers and tended malform, snagging the paper and changing thickness easily, causing uneven tension in the press, which would then lead to the paper moving out of position in a diagonal direction, shown below:



Basically a paper jam. One that would move in a circular path as it went around and around (based on what the printing machine probably looked like – a big circle). As the rubber would swell up slightly due to the pressue, it would make contact with the inked plate, causing the streak on the paper (and also scratching and damaging the plate).

In order to combat this, Knapp and Pancoast devised a fix by inserting a middle section of the web feed (highlighted in yellow above) that would control the tension and keep the paper pressure even most of the time. At least, that’s what it looks like based on the illustration and the explanation in the patent application.

Not sure exactly how the mechanism worked, but it had something to due with keeping the tension balanced with the fabric (I believe this was the term for the “blanket”, and I’m not sure if they’re referring to the rubber roller or a blanket wedged between the paper and the roller.)

[steve B]

That's interesting.

Here's the patent, which was assigned to ALC.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US...p+and+Pancoast


The "fabric" mentioned in the patent is not the Blanket, which was the covering on one of the main press rollers or anything wedged in between, but that does refer to the web itself.

Even if there was some sort of creasing damage to the blanket, that wouldn't produce solid lines of color. In fact it would generally produce the exact opposite, white unprinted lines. (Generally, as there's a possibility of some marks I've seen coming from a wrinkle but I can't say for sure that's what caused them. )
A sideways slip of the web would only produce wrinkles in one direction, along the web, and these scratches do exist in both directions, with a few cards showing an intersection.

There is some solid evidence that Some T206s were printed using a flatbed lithography press that printed from stones.
Have you found anything solid that indicates a multi color web press? It's possible, and I've seen a few things that make me think that a two color press may have been used for some of the production, but not much indication that it would have been a web press.

I can elaborate, but I'll probably have to draw some sketches, and it might be more appropriate in it's own thread.

What do you think Guys? Get into it here or in it's own thread?

[Luke]

I'd love to see this have its own thread.

Doesn't really seem possible logically (imo) that the Print Scratches could be "gear streaks". The scratches sometimes stretch the length of the sheet diagonally, and they make abrupt changes of direction. Definitely interested to hear more about the gear streaks, but unless I'm not fully understanding the term, I don't think that's what we are looking at here.

[SetBuilder]

Originally Posted by Luke

I'd love to see this have its own thread.

Doesn't really seem possible logically (imo) that the Print Scratches could be "gear streaks". The scratches sometimes stretch the length of the sheet diagonally, and they make abrupt changes of direction. Definitely interested to hear more about the gear streaks, but unless I'm not fully understanding the term, I don't think that's what we are looking at here.

The streaks go diagonally in a straight line. Something that would happen when you have paper between two spinning cylinders, and one cylinder is spinning faster than the other with pressure on one side.

A helix of ink around a cylinder is created - like a spinning barber shop pole.



If the stripes were ink, they would produce diagonal lines on a piece of paper.

[Luke]

I'm not trying to be argumentative, just interested in the idea and would like to understand it better. Here are the two main reasons why I don't think we are looking at "gear streaks"

1. The lines are definitely not "straight". They follow a general direction but are not a straight line.

2. The Plate Scratches follow the exact same pattern every time. For two of the Plate Scratch patterns, there are two different sheets with the exact same pattern on the back, but a completely different set of fronts. The backs allow us to re-create what the sheet looks like, which Pat has done.

If it was just a random malfunction of the press, I can't imagine that the pattern would be exactly the same every time.

[SetBuilder]

Originally Posted by Luke

I'm not trying to be argumentative, just interested in the idea and would like to understand it better. Here are the two main reasons why I don't think we are looking at "gear streaks"

1. The lines are definitely not "straight". They follow a general direction but are not a straight line.

2. The Plate Scratches follow the exact same pattern every time. For two of the Plate Scratch patterns, there are two different sheets with the exact same pattern on the back, but a completely different set of fronts. The backs allow us to re-create what the sheet looks like, which Pat has done.

If it was just a random malfunction of the press, I can't imagine that the pattern would be exactly the same every time.

Note: I edited my post above to add the barber shop illustration. Apologies if you replied before you saw it.

1. They're straight, but sometimes shaky. I've seen most of the photos posted on this thread and the shaky lines could possibly be due to vibration. They're definitely straight lines more often than not.

2. Do you mean that the lines appear on the backs only and not on the front? I think this is because the last stop (or first) on the press was the printing plate for the back design.

[SetBuilder]

Originally Posted by steve B

That's interesting.

Here's the patent, which was assigned to ALC.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US...p+and+Pancoast


The "fabric" mentioned in the patent is not the Blanket, which was the covering on one of the main press rollers or anything wedged in between, but that does refer to the web itself.

Even if there was some sort of creasing damage to the blanket, that wouldn't produce solid lines of color. In fact it would generally produce the exact opposite, white unprinted lines. (Generally, as there's a possibility of some marks I've seen coming from a wrinkle but I can't say for sure that's what caused them. )
A sideways slip of the web would only produce wrinkles in one direction, along the web, and these scratches do exist in both directions, with a few cards showing an intersection.

There is some solid evidence that Some T206s were printed using a flatbed lithography press that printed from stones.
Have you found anything solid that indicates a multi color web press? It's possible, and I've seen a few things that make me think that a two color press may have been used for some of the production, but not much indication that it would have been a web press.

I can elaborate, but I'll probably have to draw some sketches, and it might be more appropriate in it's own thread.

What do you think Guys? Get into it here or in it's own thread?

Steve,

I guess it's possible to also do offset lithography with a stone plate cylinder.

Doing research on this a while back, I came to the conclusion that the half-tone patterns on the T206 faces were simply "Ben-Day Dots" and that it was likely easier to produce plates from metal using acid etching instead of stone. Given the large number of player subjects and cards produced, I think this is likely the case.

I think the early 19th century color litho cards were done on flat stone. They have a distinct look and feel.

Knapp was known for his designs of multi-color rotary presses. It would've been a very odd business decision if ALC printed T206 cards using flat stones and old hand-presses.