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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GDJMSP, post: 2617571, member: 112&quot;]The dremel tool wasn&#039;t even invented until 1932, and it was many years after that before it ever saw widespread use. And it was also the first tool of its kind. So that kind of leaves it out of the picture.</p><p><br /></p><p>In today&#039;s world, yeah some dies, Proofs, have fine touchup hand work done on them with dremel tools. (But in years gone past that never happened because there were no tools like that.) But dies used for regular coins, business strikes, do not. There just isn&#039;t time nor is there money to allow this. Dies, even the Proofs, are still polished using the same basic method that has been used since the 1800&#039;s - it is done by machine, a spinning disk impregnated with diamond dust of vary degrees of fineness.</p><p><br /></p><p>And in years past, when clashes happened or a die became too worn for further use, the re-polishing was done in exactly the same way - by machine. And if you think about for even a half a minute, this makes perfect sense. Be cause dies are too small and hand work is too imprecise for polishing to be done by hand. Nor were there any tools capable of polishing that could be operated by hand. </p><p><br /></p><p>Picture a die, and the area where a clash mark occurs. The clash is visible in the fields, the highest point on the die, and the clash mark is very small. So how do you get to something that small, with a hand operated tool, and polish it away ? Answer you don&#039;t because you can&#039;t - you can&#039;t just touch the die at that one spot because all the rest of the fields are just as high as it is. Nor can you hold something (a tool) perfectly flat with your hand and touch one tiny area and NOT touch any adjoining area, and thus damage that adjoining area. So the only way to make that mark go away is to polish the entire die field surface.</p><p><br /></p><p>And the evidence that this is true are the coins themselves. Think of the 3 legged Buffalo - the top of the 4th leg was polished away because the entire surface of the die fields was polished until it was lowered enough to wear away a portion of the device. If a small area was polished away by hand - you&#039;d have a big lump on the coin because that tiny polished area on the die would be a depression. But this is not the case, the surface of the fields is the same height all the way across, but it was lowered enough to intrude into the device and polish away a portion of the device.</p><p><br /></p><p>Basically all of this is just common sense, some things simply cannot be done by hand with the tools that were available at the time. And die polish lines always being parallel and not criss-crossing is also common sense because of the method used to polish dies.</p><p><br /></p><p>And yes, the surface of a die can easily be scratched, and they are scratched. Thinking that something is too hard to be scratched is foolish, even a diamond can be scratched ! </p><p><br /></p><p>Now all of this said yes dies were at time worked on by hand and the marks made by this handwork are well known - they are called tool marks. We know this because tool marks are used in many cases for variety attribution. And hand tools can also scratch dies. But hand tools were not used to polish dies because you can&#039;t polish with a hand tool, it simply can&#039;t be done.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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