VOCABULARY TERM: PUNCH, PART TWO

Sources of punches. Breen reports that an early American machinist, Henry Starr, provided letter and figure punches to the United States Mint in Philadelphia from 1816-1824. After this time it was Christian Gobrecht who furnished these punches (which was his first effort in a long campaign to be engaged as an engraver at the mint). It does point out that engravers could make their own punches, but would purchase these if suitable punches were easily available elsewhere.

While relationship between punchmaker and engraver was close, it was also close to those craftsmen who made the matrixes for printers' type. If an engraver could prepare a die for a coin or medal he could also prepare the set of matrixes for making type. After assistant engraver John Reich left the U.S. Mint's employ, he established a type foundry for Philadelphia printers with three partners. This collapsed with the financial panic of 1819; he relocated to Pittsburgh and reestablished a type foundry there June 1820.

Continued use of punches. When punches were first developed by hand engravers, who prepared the entire design by hand, their use carried over when die-engraving pantographs came into use. For the most part pantographs created only the portrait or device, leaving the lettering, dentiles, dates and ornamentation to be applied by hand again. (There was a technical reason for this in the development of early pantographs – the quality of cutting lettering near the border was not as good until later models, notable the Janvier, solved the problem.) See pantograph.

Thus, coin and medal dies as late as 1900 were often times hubbed with the main device, then hand punched with lettering, dentiles and dates.

Treatment after punching. The normal use of a punch is to sink it into metal. This causes adjacent metal to be pushed aside, or erupted, as the punch creates the cavity in the metal. Often it is necessary to flatten, remove, or reduce this ridge next to the cavity. (Sometimes, as in diamond scratch point inscribing, this ridge is purposefully left intact to heighten the impression of the depth of the cavity.) The metal thrown up around the cavities of edgelettering is called edge push.

If this ridge is flattened, an astute diesinker will sometimes go back and repunch the cavity to eliminate any overhang of metal that flowed back in the cavity from the flattening. All in all, the punch user must have an intimate knowledge of tool steel and the movement of surface metal. If the ridge remains and is unsightly he might want to remove it by CHASING.

Punches used in edgelettering. Applying lettering on a struck piece can be accomplished with punches. These can be done with individual punches, but more often with a logotype punch (of several characters and symbols). Applying the maker's name is often done in this manner.

A special kind of punch die is created to effect lettering on the narrow rounded edge of a coin or medal, the roller die. Tiny raised punch letters appear at the apex of a double beveled disk. The medal to be edgelettered is laid in the pan of a special hand press, the roller die is impressed under pressure against the edge of the medal and the roller die rotated imparting the letters. See roller die.

Punches used in hallmarking. With the rise of hallmarking fine silver in England in the 15th century it was natural for this mark of fineness to be applied to an object with a punch. The punchmark of three characters – sovereign, maker and date – could easily be applied by separate punches and easily changed as date or sovereign changed. The guilds of goldsmiths would chose a typeface and usually run through 25 characters – a different one for each year – alternating between capital letters and lower case. See hallmark and hallmarking.

For those houses with a large production, a gangpunch could be made for applying all three characters at one time. Such gangpunch would be discarded March 30th of each year after the new gangpunch was prepared; it contained the symbol for the new year, the old one would then be obsolete.

Punches used in counterstamping. Most counterstamping is surreptitious and never intended by the designer of the original numismatic piece. A single punch, logotype or more than one punch were used to impart letters or characters to the host piece. Mostly the counterstamping is done by someone inexperienced in diesinking and the lettering does not have a uniform base line, the characters are not well spaced and are tilted to give a quite amateurish look. Counterstamping is done to the struck piece, to the existing host coin or medal, never to the die (it would be diesinking if so performed).

Special punches. Some punches are employed to create texture, as a background punch or dapple tool. When applied to a surface in multiple locations this will create a textured field. A matting tool, also use to make texture, is a punch used in chasing.

Also some special punches are those that have a wheel at the end that are rolled over soft metal to create a line of some ornaments. These are called beading tool, beading roulette or milgrain tool.

Punch anomalies. Incorrect punches or those used upside down or even sideways create anomalies. Overpunching, or using the correct punch a second time to correct a wrong position or wrong punch, will correct these errors somewhat. However this requires sinking the punch slightly deeper into the die creating varieties of great interest to numismatists in the pieces struck from such a die.

Overdates are created by using a punch to change a date to perhaps a later year, adding additional life to a once used die. Such overdating is done by punches.

Cataloging punches. Studying individual punches is like studying individual fingerprints, each has it's own individuality, though this may be very slight. Recognizing that two different coins with exactly the same punch used for each diesinking proves – generally – they came from the same source: perhaps, from the same period, the same mint or even, from the same engraver.

It is a very advanced stage of numismatic science to study punchmark linkage – identifying the same punch used on different dies. This has occurred for American colonial and early U.S. coins. It ceases importance when punches were no longer used in preparation of dies (basically after 1900 with the introduction of the die-engraving pantographs which cut the entire die at once without adding lettering afterwards).

References:
NC12 {1988} Breen, p 202.
C67 {1988} Cooper, p 19.

To read the complete entry on the Newman Numismatic Portal, see:
Punch, Puncheon (https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/dictionarydetail/516571)

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
Vocabulary Term: Punch, Part One (https://www.coinbooks.org/v27/esylum_v27n48a15.html)

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web