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Everything that is done to this plate will show up onthe printed stamps and so has a bearing upon the stampsyou collect. After the steel plate has been annealed and madeready to receive the transfers, the exact position of eachdesign is indicated upon the plate by means of "guidedots" or very faintly scratched lines. Bearing in mindthat the paper upon which the stamps will be printedis first moistened and so will shrink, perhaps unevenly,the craftsman lays out his plate by means of precisiontools to allow a sufficient space between each stamp bothhorizontally and vertically. Sometimes he will allow adifference in the width between the rows of the stamps,as in the case of the first stamps issued in 1908. Hereit was found that, owing to the excessive unevennessin paper shrinkage, there was considerable waste becausethe sheets of stamps did not pass through the perforatingmachines correctly. Hence experiments were made byspacing the six outside vertical rows of each printingplate a full millimeter wider than the inside rows. Natu-rally such a difference in the spacing of the stamps wasnot lost on stamp collectors who promptly had a newvariety for their collections. It must be admitted that, sofar as the author knows, this is the only occasion thata difference in width of spacing between the rows ofstamps was attempted on the printing plates. |
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