Were 1853 seated Liberty obverse dies reused with arrows added?
RogerB
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In reading some recently digitized U.S. Mint letters, it occurred to me that the opportunity existed for the Coiner and Engraver to reuse 1853 obverse dies by softening them, and adding arrows at the date.
Do the seated Liberty coin specialists out there have any thoughts or comments on this hypothesis?
Thanks!
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I am far from being a specialist, but it would seem to make financial sense to add the arrows to the existing dies, if they were still useable.
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Agreed. The Sec of Treasury wanted a complete obverse redesign, but the Director knew the limitations of his staff and technology.
In those days the government did not have fiat money to waste.
They waste enough money now to put arrows, bows, and extra stars on every coin.
By hand.
Interesting !!!
Good question.
Given that no one has documented all the 1853 A&R quarter and half dollar dies (perhaps a couple hundred for each issue) I'm not sure this question can be answered.
The easiest way to do it would be to start with the NA coins and look for unique die characteristics.
I do know Bill Bugert is of the opinion that the 1853A&R halves had the date & arrows engraved in the master die.
RE: "I do know Bill Bugert is of the opinion that the 1853A&R halves had the date & arrows engraved in the master die."
I'll look in what we have so far. Maybe something is mentioned about new master dies. At present I do not recall seeing this mentioned.
This is in the Wiley-Bugert book.
Is it attributed to a contemporary source?
I believe that it is based upon observation of the coins, but I do not know this for a fact.
Interesting question... much would depend on the state of the dies..... Which, if it happened, likely was only on the dies in good condition... i.e. lightly used at that point. Cheers, RickO
It could be. One of the problems for type collectors, who are looking for them in the top Mint State grades, is that the luster is often washed out. That could be from the fact that mint was in a hurry to get as many of these coins out as possible and cut corners with respect to die preparation, die re-polishing and die replacement procedures. These coins should be more common in Mint State than they are given the mintages.
It makes sense that 1853 obverse dies (either already used or never used) could have been used to strike more coins by adding arrows. The main roadblocks to prove this happened are the lack of a paper trail and the lack of high grade "No Arrows" quarters to look for identical "die markers."
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"Common knowledge" says that after a die has been used long enough to work harden the steel it is impossible to punch a new date into it, but I will leave this to Dan Carr to confirm or deny.
The "common knowledge" is wrong. A working die is hardened and tempered before first use. If a change is to be made, it can be softened in exactly the way it was when being created from multiple blows of the hub. Die steel does not "work harden" - it will, however, collapse if the hardening/tempering is not correctly done. (The crystal structure will change during use, but that does not prevent softening and then hardening/tempering again.)
Die steel does work-harden. When I am breaking in a new pair of dies I initially leave the large nuts on the die fixtures a little bit loose. During the first few strikes, the dies invariably expand in diameter a small amount, and then stabilize. At this point the nuts are tight, even thought I never turned them after the first strike. If I were to fully tighten the nuts prior to the first strike, the slight expansion of the dies would make the nuts EXTREMELY tight and difficult to get off.
A die which has had a central "collapse" is die that had insufficient hardening at the core. The hardening process (via heat-treating) will start at the exterior and progress inwards to the core of the die. If the time duration at which the die is subjected to the hardening temperature is too short, the die core will not be hardened as much as the exterior. The general rule is that the die needs to remain at the hardening temperature for one hour for every inch of thickness. So a 1.5" diameter silver dollar die should be kept at the full heat-treating temperature for at least 1-1/2 hours.
As for re-annealing an already hardened die, altering the engraving, and then re-hardening it, that would NOT work. For a die to be sufficiently hardened it needs to be at least 55 to 60 on the Rockwell hardness scale. Anything less than that and the die will crush and expand in diameter when used, to the point that the die face mushrooms and will no longer fit in the collar. I typically use "A2" steel which in the virgin state is about 20 on the Rockwell hardness scale. This is soft enough for engraving.
Some years ago I acquired some defaced surplus Denver Mint dies, from circa mid-1990s. They were at the coining hardness (about 60). When I annealed them, the softest that I could get them down to was about 35, not the preferred 20. I was still able to engrave them at 35, with some difficulty. But after engraving, the best that could be achieved when re-hardening was about 50, which was not hard enough for the dies to survive.
So with each successive annealing and hardening, the results diminish. The only way to restore the virgin properties of the steel is to completely re-forge (melt) it and hot-roll it into new die stock.
Punching arrows into an already-hardened 1853 die would not be advised, for two reasons: the depth of the resulting arrow punch would be very shallow (the arrows would be in very low relief on any coins struck from such a die); and the risk of deforming and damaging the arrow punch would be very high. Re-annealing, punching, and re-hardening would not work either for the reasons described previously. And also consider that each annealing and hardening process would result in some further degradation of the fine detail and sharpness of the existing die engraving.
Thanks for the voice of experience.
The old steel dies in 19th century use did not work harden to any appreciable amount. When the crystal structure changed and the die was not re-tempered, it broke apart.
It is fair to note the Mr. Carr has considerable practical experience with modern steels and his own highly-modified press. I'm sure he is fully conversant on what is necessary for him to produce satisfactory results under present conditions. He mentions several difficulties he has encountered and his solutions - all perfectly reasonable for the present day and his mechanical set-up.
We are all familiar with work-hardening of soft die steel when used with hardened hub to impress working dies. The work-hardened steel had to be softened between blows. But final heat treatment of both hardening and tempering was intended to prevent any further modification of the surface during use. The minute lines we see on older dies are a product of crystal changes and not simple work-hardening.
But die steel of the 1850 was far different than that in use today. Purity, consistency, alloy mixing and other factors were vastly different, as was the knowledge of how to handle the material for the best results. It was not until over a generation later that the work of Sir William Chandler Roberts-Austen, specifically for the Royal Mint, described, defined and produced reliable metallurgical measurements for steel use in minting and elsewhere.
Unfortunately, we do not have the machinists and Coiner's notebooks from the 1850s. They likely contain the distilled knowledge of two generations of US Mint mechanics and practical metallurgists - something we sorely lack today.
Annealing a non-heat-treated hub to relieve work hardening is one thing (is possible). Annealing an already hardened steel die is altogether different. The changes in the metal caused by the heat-treating can not be undone short of completely melting it.
All metals will work-harden, to some extent. Annealed steel will work-harden. Heat-treated steel will also work-harden, as I have experienced it first hand. I heat-treat my dies in the same manner that the US Mint did 150+ years ago. It is true that if a steel die has been hardened but not properly tempered, it will have only a minor work-hardening capacity. But it would also be very brittle and unsuitable for use as a die (early cracking probable). An old die that has been properly heat-treated and tempered for normal use will definitely work-harden to some extent.
I reiterate that hardening a die, annealing it to modify the engraving, and hardening it again will not work very well, regardless of the steel formula.
Considering evidence from 1853 half dime obverse dies,
there is only one obverse die known for 1853 no arrows, used in the V-1 die pair.
For the 1853 arrows die pairs listed by Valentine, the V-10 has a date position and 5 style which might be a match to the V-1 obverse - see above photo array.
There were at least 2 gang date punches used for 1853 half dime obverses, one with the blunt 5 flag above,
and another with a pointed flag.
Like the 1853 dime obverses, it appears that several of the 1853 half dime obverse dies were made from hubs with the date and arrows in the hub. Other obverse dies had varying date and arrow positions.
Same position right and left, but the NA looks a tiny bit higher. Also look at the different disruptions of the base above the right side of the 1.
yosclimber: So there might have been a mixture of hubbed and individually-added arrows?
One should use the very top surface of digits for comparison - these were the only parts of the digit punch that could be identical.
Disruption of the "table" (or field) near a digit would occur almost any time a digit or letter was punched into a soft die. This should have been removed during die clean-up -- meaning, it could exist on a master die/hub and not or a die.
Lots of variables, and evidently lots of 1853 dies were used - w and w/o arrows.
(Correspondence suggests adding arrows was something of a last minute approval. If so, that might support the initial thoughts, above.)
Nice work but note that the N/A die was already cracking.
Obviously procedures were changed on the fly. Some dies were made early without the Arrows and used. Some dies were made without Arrows, either before or after the change in weight was ordered, but then had Arrows added before being used. Some dies were hubbed from hubs that had both the date and the Arrows on them.
This all brings up one of my favorite die varieties, the 1853/1854 quarter. I was one of the consultants who helped attribute the variety as a backwards overdate, the earlier year having been impressed over the later year. Was the final hubbing from the 1853 hub over a die started with the 1854 hub accidental or deliberate? I can see a reason for doing it deliberately, if at the end of 1853 the Mint had a perfectly good "With Rays" reverse die to use up that it could not carry over into 1854, as often happened from one year into the next, because the Rays were being phased out. Backdating a die to 1853 would allow them to use up that old reverse.
Good points. but for now, we don't know when the order to remove the rays was issued - At least not known from the record's I've seen so far.
The 1853/1854 With Rays could have been struck in early 1854 for all we know.