Thank you to all for your time.
let me first start off by saying in no way am I trying to be disrespectful in the questions I ask or reasons I state as to what "i see", as you have a greater knowledge than myself in this area and I understand its hard just from pictures and that you deal with the same novice questions over and over so thanks for your patience as I learn.
I pretty much figured this was an over polished die.
I asked because I was surprised that to remove that much of the field in one area below the bust and the bust design and not effect the liberty while showing very little signs of buffing lines anywhere and that the field did not show a difference / distortion in its depth somewhere around 7-8 or no other signs of a clash, was behind my reasoning to ask for advice on this one.
Coop I understand that the vdb is raised on the die and is easily polished away and very common. it was more that only 1/2 of the design was there. I would have expected that the half of the vdb that was left on the die would have also been quickly removed or distorted/rounded in the polishing process and not left almost untouched thus allowing just 1/2 the vdb design to be so prominently struck into the planchet.
My novice "reasoning" is this (and this is where I get into trouble trying to combine the "reasoning" of a few different experiences into one lol) after working with wood to a +-.003 tolerance (i qualified years ago, to repair a chippendale chair) it is very hard to cut/sand/polish a design in half and then feather it into a flat field without rounding the designs or showing traces of such actions somewhere on the flat field. adding in having been a machinist too, I know that metal is much less forgiving in many ways, lastly having made molds from original pieces for colonial williamsburg and the newport historic society for mass reproduction using the same rtv rubber and catalysed plastics as the mint did (still does?) I somewhat understand the breaking down of a mold/die and what is done to extend its life, and in doing so what happens to the design of the final product.
You people are ALL GREAT here in sharing your time and expert knowledge. thank you for putting up with my novice questions, reasonings and my growing worse eye sight. I guess I need to make a trip to the mint and pester them some / ALOT..lol til I learn a bit more and see first hand the process, machinery, tools and methods and how each are used in the minting of coins before I pester you guys too much more :) lol
Thank you and ...Have a great day!!
Posted 04/05/2018 7:02 pm
