How where t206's cut?

[Phillies*phan]

Sorry for all the ?'s today but I have never seen this before. I bought a group of cards and this card was in there. All of it's edges look like they where cut with a rusty pocketknife. However, I'm 99% sure it isn't trimmed as it's the perfect size and the edges are straight.
Where the cards cut with the same blade and they just rotated the sheet of cards?

[Cardboard Junkie]

There are those here who may know but not me. Good question though.

[Ronnie73]

I believe the cards were cut with the machine pictured in the link. I've used one of these cutters at an old print shop. There is an adjustable fence on the back side of the cutter and clamp. I believe the card sheets were cut first into vertical strips. So the fence would be adjusted 1 7/16 inches from the blade and then a stack of sheets maybe measuring 1 to 2 inches thick with a scrap piece of thick cardboard on the bottom and top of the pile would be slid into the front of the cutter. Adjust the pile smoothly against the fence and then turn the clamp wheel down tight. This is why a piece of scrap cardboard is used, so there are no clamp impressions on the cards. Then pull the handle down and cut the pile. Release the clamp and put the cut strip aside and continue to repeat the process until a good quantity are cut into strips. Now to cut the strips into single cards. Adjust the fence to 2 5/8 inches and now cut them into singles. I believe it was done exactly in this process because when cutting small strips of anything on one of these cutters, the clamp does not have enough surface area to clamp onto and the pile tends to sometimes fan out a bit. This would be the reason we see some T206's with the tops and bottoms cut at equal angles known to many as diamond cuts. The cards could not be cut any other way because if you follow a diamond cut angle threw a whole sheet, the cut will be maybe an inch or so into the picture on one side of the sheet and on the other side the cut will be between the boarders of two cards. So first they were cut into vertical strips and then cut into singles. Hope this is not too confusing. I could always draw a diagram to explain the diamond cut angles.

http://www.bookbindersmuseum.com/ind...id=1:equipment

[steve B]

Yep, Rons got it.

The fancier cutters have a strip of wood or more recently plastic where the blade ends up, so it doesn't actually touch the machine table.

The strips wear as they're supposed to, and the blades get dull as well. Once you've got a dull blade cutting into a worn wear strip the cut gets ragged as there's a bit more tearing than cutting happening.

One of the cards I have was rejected from grading as "miscut". Within the allowable size, not trimmed, but a very ragged cut top and bottom.

Steve B
I made a few parts for a prototype papercutter that had a wear strip that could be moved up a few thousandths of an inch so the blade would be cutting into a fresh part of the strip. .003 wall stainless tubing with hydraulic fittings brazed on. it worked ok, but was fragile and the brazing wasn't at all easy.

[ArchStanton]

Funny. I rent storage space to a bingo supply company, and they still use an old cutter almost identical to the one in the link.

[T206.org]

Great info, guys!

That explains this Mattern too then, agreed?
http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=143480

[Ronnie73]

I would say yes. The cutter tends to tear instead of cutting just as Steve said, when the blade is dull or in my experence with the cutter, the closest sheet to the table tends to have the ruffest cut, even with a sharp blade.

[Phillies*phan]

So, I'm thinking this card is untrimmed but they will be scared to grade it do to it being a 7 or 8.

[Ronnie73]

Has the card ever been rejected from a grading service? I have alot of Topps OPC cards from the 1970's that are graded PSA 8 and some of the cards look as if the card stock was folded multiple times to break the fibers and the cards were pulled apart. I know alot of them were like this and maybe thats why they were not rejected. If theres no evidence of trimming, it should grade but you can never tell with PSA and SGC which way its gonna go.

[Phillies*phan]

No. It hasn't been submitted yet. I just think both companies are scared to grade anything they're not sure of right now.

[Ronnie73]

I would say, since the card measures correctly and i'm thinking you measured top to bottom and side to side. Because it has all sharp corners, you should also measure diagonally corner to corner which most people don't, and do it both ways and the measurement needs to match exact both ways or its most likely trimmed. The only reason I mention this is that top border looks a little off. If they match, I'd give it a shot and have it graded.

[FrankWakefield]

I used one of those about 40+ years ago. I worked for a small town newspaper that had been in business since the late 1800's...

The table had grooves lightly etched into it, a grid, like graph paper, that was of great help in aligning paper on the table. That big handle would be back over to the right, out of the way, while doing that. Depicted just under the handle and in the center of that table is a small wheel. That controlled a piece of metal that was at the back of the table. Turning it one way moved that piece, that stop, toward the front, turning the other way moved it back. We'd put the paper on the table, move that little wheel to adjust the depth, then move that big wheel at the top which lowered this big piece of metal to hold the material in place. Once it was down so the paper couldn't move, then we'd work that big handle to the left as it is shown. My recollection is that they kept a piece of wood between the blade and tabletop when it wasn't in use, to preserve the blade. It would slice through paper like, as they used to say in the hills around here, like a hot knife through butter.

I agree, I think this would be what was used. It could cut with great precision with just a little bit of practice.

[jcmtiger]

Doug, I don't think it would get a 7 or 8 anyway. The top left corner has a small problem, there is a white line running downward from the right elbow.
And the back has dirt or staining that will affect the grade

Just things I saw, Joe.

[steve B]

It's anyones guess how a grading co would handle a rough cut. It's a gray area, as a rough cut could be trimming, or just rough.

Here's the Needham I sent in. Sov 460, correct size, just rough top and bottom borders. The more I think about it, the more comfortable I am that they wouldn't assign a grade.
A really close look will show it's not trimmed, but if they slab borderline or oddly made stuff it's trouble with people that arent familiar with some of the tecnical aspects of how things got made. I'd love to have seen it in maybe a 60 or more likely a 50 holder, but I can understand why they wouldn't.

I wonder if they'd slab it with the MIS flip they printed? I've never seen one done that way and I figure I only got the MIS because I opted for no A slabs.

I'd hope someday there will be a more detailed grading service that could make allowances for cards like this with factory but odd cuts, or cards that are factory but undersize.

Steve B

[Ronnie73]

Miscut and Trimmed are two different things. PSA uses the qualifier (MC) for miscut cards. A miscut would be a factory cut. Maybe better luck with a PSA slab since SGC doesn't have qualifiers and would only give an A grade.

[Sterling Sports Auctions]

How are the diamond cuts explained?

Lee

[Ronnie73]

A diamond cut is a cut that slants at an angle usually left to right on the top and bottom of a card. So the card have a diamond shape. It happens because there is not enough surface area to clamp the cards down to cut them and they sometimes fan out at an angle when cut. Now when the next card is cut, its at an angle too because the cards are positioned smooth against the fence as explained in my first post. Usually once a sheet is cut at an angle, the rest are at an angle too. Just like building a house, if the first wall is tilted and everything else is measured from that tilted wall, then the whole house will be tilted.

[FrankWakefield]

Lee... If you took a dozen index cards, held them stacked together, then tried to cut them all at once with scissors, then you'd see them shift a bit so that all 12 aren't cut exactly the same. That shift is what resulted in the slight diamond cut. In looking at that old paper cutter, that wheel at the top would be turned tight against whatever you were cutting to avoid shift. The other thing to do was to cut a few sheets at a time, instead of a bunch.

[ArchStanton]

I just got a couple of quick pics of this today. It looks similar to the one in the link.

[mkdltn]

Awhile back I posted an article about American Litho, written shortly after the new facility was set up in 1897. Page 623 has a picture of the electric motor driven cutters installed at the time.

http://net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=125899