WARNING: This will be long, dry and boring, so do not read until you are already totally bored and have the time and inclination to dive into the mind of a psychotic fool such as I.
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Collars were standard issue to the branch mints in regular die shipments and were intended to last approximately one million strikes (as there was no strike force exerted to the collar other than the outward overflow displacement of planchet metal to the inner walls), so I still cannot fathom exactly why 1878 vam-6 would have used three collars and 14.2 would have used two collars.
While eventually reed counts may become more relevant to die identification and die state progression than they currently are.....I wonder if all of this advanced technology that others have mentioned (that is supposed to advance the hobby through easier identification of particular dies) will work as well on reeding.
Consider this......dies that are secured in a press, (and not taken out of that press) should have identical reeding on each and every coin.....meaning that if stacked perfectly, the reeding would appear as solid straight lines through all the coins in the stack.....sometime in the future, this may suffice as a prime consideration in the determination of whether or not a die was removed for polishing, or just returned to the issue room overnight......the reeding (if more than one collar was used) could also tell die state progression of a particular
VAM, or more importantly, if two separate vams are actually the same
VAM.
This brings me to an issue that I brought up over a year ago elsewhere, but the notion fell on deaf and nay-saying ears because I have no credibility (for several reasons).
It is the inherent destiny of a metal (like steel) to fatigue and result in stress cracks over time..... Since there actually are some thinkers here on this forum, allow me to pose this notion to you:
Stress cracks are most prevalent at the edges and surfaces of a metal (just like they are with cookies), and this is due to the heating and cooling of the material.......A crack will extend its length over time....I think that everyone can imagine that.......but consider this now......the stress crack does not only extend across the surface of the die, but downward into the die as well, but just not nearly at the same rate as it does across the surface, and this is because the surface is harder and more brittle than is the material below the surface, (and this is physical fact, by the way, not just my imagination).
So, as the die crack grows in length, we can see it.....as it grows in depth, we can also see this as the relief of the crack gets bigger.....despite the popular definitions of cracks and breaks, the fact of the matter is that a break is a crack of sufficient depth to allow planchet metal to displace into the crack at strike to transfer as a crack of greater relief than a faint crack.....As repetitive strikings occur, the planchet metal that is perpetually forced into that die crack wears away at the inner walls of the crack (like erosion) and causes the crack to deepen, and the transfer to coin to grow in relief......Sometimes a crack may appear as a break, when actually there is only surface chipping along the crack causing a blob of metal on the coin that gives the illusion of a break (rather like the chipping of a sidewalk along its cracks).
Now if you can grasp the concept that these stress cracks begin as superficial metal fatigue (on the die surface), and will only manifest themselves into breaks (deepened cracks) through repetitive use coupled with the neglect of preventative maintenance (polishing), you should be able to understand that a crack can be polished out of the die just as easy as a clash or a chip, (if not allowed to exist for too long)......the difference between a clash and a crack is that a clash will diminish with extended wear, but a crack will grow with extended wear.
Consider this now...... A crack can be polished out of a die, and depending upon whether or not the polishing continued to a depth sufficient to eradicate all traces of the molecular fissure..... If the crack is superficial enough to allow this, the crack will not remanifest itself.....Further usage of this die may produce another crack elsewhere on this same die causing us to believe that this is now a different die based on a different crack in a different location...... Although I do not know his reasoning for sure, I can only imagine that this is the rationale behind acceptance of breaks as qualifiers for die identification rather than mere cracks.
What I am getting at here is that not only do I put any faith whatsoever in the rhetoric supplied by those who claim to have die states all figured out, I have even less belief in their ability to accurately identify specific dies.....I think that a third dimension (the collar die) could aide tremendously in the search for the die is the die thing, if someday folks would learn to use the reeds as the unique creatures that they are, and refrain from speculative attribution based on clashes and chips, cracks and scratches and other features that can come and go through wear and polishing........ (polishing, if done with passionate care) can leave no visible signs.....a hurried job will though.
I am of the notion that identification of several of the known vams may be redundant because of the mindset of how things are perceived to be.....I think that things are far more complicated than currently assumed, and that many things will never be realized.
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Posted 12/16/2010 11:52 am
