Question for the bust half variety guys on an early date

JRocco

This is an early date bust half. What is happening with the notching on the bottom of the letters here. If you can explain this to me I would appreciate it.
Can the real bust half nuts ID this year using just this pic?

DNADave

1831 ?

Nysoto

JRocco,

Probably from lapping, I have seen preturbs get progressively worse notching due to lapping. The relief is lowered as the fields are ground down to remove clashing etc, and the letters lose detail.

Don't know the variety or year in the capped series.

mozin

I can recall seeing the notching at the bottom of letters before. For some reason, I do not connect it with any specific marriage. All I can think is to agree with Nysoto, caused by die lapping. If this is the case, the notching would certainly show up in more than one CBH marriage.

JRocco

Thanks guys, your opinions are appreciated. Anyone else that wants to chime in---chime in

greghansen

Wow. Neat question. I have no idea. Can't wait to see what the consensus opinion is.

MikeKing

I would think die lapping caused these notches. My 1822 O-111 has quite a bit of that.
Edited to add: I am not saying this is an O-111 because it looks like your I is centered under the R side of T, just that the erosion at the bases of the letters is similar.

DNADave

So what year is it?

PreTurb

I don't see how this is a result of lapping - negative feature on the coin (indents seen here) equals positive feature (material present) on the die. Extra material on the die is not a result of lapping.

Now, if what we are looking at is not inward notching, but a relative widening of the side serifs due to die chipping, then that's different. But this is extremely improbable due to the uniformity of the thickness of the thicker portions of the serifs (bottom stand of letters).

One would have to study this reverse die and those close to it in manufacture sequence (mfr seq sometimes hard / impossible to determine) - to see if it is a feature of the letter punches used (which is my guess).

OKbustchaser

I have an 1811 O-102 which shows the same phenomenon. Like PreTurb, I don't see it as lapping. My guess has always been die erosion. (By the way, if this happens to be an 1811 102...it looks to be a nice coin! Most of these--including mine--I have seen are heavily worn and damaged.)

JRocco

I wish this were the 102 OKbustchaser. It is an 1811 O-108. You did nail the year. Your 102 is a B reverse while my 108 is an F reverse. I am not sure offhand of the sequence of these, but I will check. I will take some full obv/rev pics and post this one--- I like this coin a lot and snagged this nice one from an ICG slab.

mozin

I will try to grab my 1811 O-102 from the bank to check it out for notched bottom letters. Anyone else have the marriage and want to join in?

Maybe I should check all my 1811 marriages.

coinlieutenant

I dont have a 102 but I dont see that as lapping

MikeKing

check your 182 marriages as well

mozin

Edgar Souders, author of the highly recommended book BUST HALF FEVER, was kind enough to share with me his analysis of this notched foot letter characteristic on CBHs. Today, Edgar wrote to me

"I've studied this characteristic on a number of halves and believe that it is not due to lapping (in a past study I tried to duplicate this feature by lapping my plaster dies, and could not) nor is it due to defective letter punches (as this could easily be traced from working die to working die).

I believe that this "notched letter bottom" feature is solely due to extreme metal flow during the strike. One of the reasons that I say this is because of the fact that later states of the die marriage may or may not show this feature. But there is more that is much more noticeable - let me explain further. If you'll note there is no notch to the bottom of either "S" as there is a "wall" of sorts, holding back the metal flow, directly above the bottom of the outside curve of the "S" (as the working die's "S" was a hole in the die field). My belief is that this resistance "held the metal back" from notching. However, where ever a letter has a vertical opening (the vertical bar of the "T", the vertical bar of the "E" and even the angled bars of the "A" to a lesser degree - then the notch appears. The metal not only flowed up and into the letter cavity during the strike but also out from the center towards the dentils. Think about this for a second. As the metal goes up it also "slides" outward thereby creating the notch. Note also on the "A" that the notch on the right side of the "A" is pushed in further than the minute notch on the left side of the "A". This makes sense as the left side of the "A" is very narrow (compared to the right side) and this, in effect, acts as more of a metal buffer during metal flow during the strike. You'll also note that the "O" in the image has no notch - very similar to the "S's". While at first glance one would think that this much metal could not have 'flowed" to the extent that it notched the letters to this degree I would refer you to the extreme metal flow that I show at the bottom of page 202 of Bust Half Fever - Second Edition (see below). Here, not only are the bottoms of the "T" and "E" showing the notch (not the "S"), but the tops of the letters show the extreme amount of metal that flowed during the strike.

Improperly annealed planchets (soft) or worn (warm) dies from constant pounding of the screwpress would definitely help this process along."

coinlieutenant

One thing that I love about Mr. Sounders is his extreme willingness to teach and answer emails. Thanks Mozin and Ed Sounders!

Conder101

The term for this effect is Bifurcation and they are refered to as bifurcated letters. It is caused by a metal flow problem.

MikeKing

Thanks Mozin for making that contact.

JRocco

Absolutely incredible amount of help/knowledge/willingness to share Mozin. I tip my hat to you. I would like to publicly thank Edgar Souders for his help via your correspondence with him.

HEY FOLKS------ THIS IS WHAT THESE BOARDS ARE ALL ABOUT-----!!!!!

Look for a minute at the contributions here. I could only hope that reversing the roles- I could help others here as much as these guys are willing to help me.

CaptHenway

Third bump of an old BIFURCATION thread.

LanceNewmanOCC

@CaptHenway said:
Third bump of an old BIFURCATION thread.

man. you're on FIRE!

JRocco

Here is the image of the coin showing bifurcation
1811 CBH