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<p>[QUOTE="lkeigwin, post: 1422269, member: 30400"]You are right, Mike. There is a typical weakness in those areas. But not a persistent one. Yet it seems to be the case with this variety even though the typical strike for 1834's was quite good.</p><p><br /></p><p>Much of this comes from Souders (<u>Bust Half Fever</u>). He calls 1834 "The Year of Kneass' Experimentation".</p><p><br /></p><p>Lots of changes were happening to design in '34 (date sizes, letter sizes, even a smaller Liberty). The theory is a lot of it was driven by widespread counterfeiting. Chief Engraver William Kneass was trying to find methods to standardize design elements to deter it.</p><p><br /></p><p>Edge devices were still punched into the dies by hand in 1834. But for these three varieties Kneass started experimenting. He re-engraved master dies, and then reworked and lowered relief on the subsequent hubs. Then a working die was used to test results. (This is different from the usual practice of punching working dies.) Master dies were re-annealed, existing hubs were re-pressed into master dies to improve relief, and lousy results called for more hand tooling of hubs. It goes on. Further experiments were done to try to hub more elements, Souders asserts.</p><p><br /></p><p>Almost all the CBH's for these "abominable bast*rd" varieties show the same weakness. Given all this experimentation it seems logical that it was at least partly responsible.</p><p>Lance.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>
[QUOTE="lkeigwin, post: 1422269, member: 30400"]You are right, Mike. There is a typical weakness in those areas. But not a persistent one. Yet it seems to be the case with this variety even though the typical strike for 1834's was quite good. Much of this comes from Souders ([u]Bust Half Fever[/u]). He calls 1834 "The Year of Kneass' Experimentation". Lots of changes were happening to design in '34 (date sizes, letter sizes, even a smaller Liberty). The theory is a lot of it was driven by widespread counterfeiting. Chief Engraver William Kneass was trying to find methods to standardize design elements to deter it. Edge devices were still punched into the dies by hand in 1834. But for these three varieties Kneass started experimenting. He re-engraved master dies, and then reworked and lowered relief on the subsequent hubs. Then a working die was used to test results. (This is different from the usual practice of punching working dies.) Master dies were re-annealed, existing hubs were re-pressed into master dies to improve relief, and lousy results called for more hand tooling of hubs. It goes on. Further experiments were done to try to hub more elements, Souders asserts. Almost all the CBH's for these "abominable bast*rd" varieties show the same weakness. Given all this experimentation it seems logical that it was at least partly responsible. Lance.[/QUOTE]
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