Considerable progress on the plate scratch sheets

[Pat R]

For a long time I had been mainly working on sheet #1 of the plate scratch
sheets. Recently I decided to get back to the other sheets with a little different
approach.

I have 300+ plate scratch cards that I had been keeping in alphabetical
order so when I needed a certain scan it was easy to find that card. A couple
of weeks ago I decided to separate them into groups for the sheet/partial
sheet they were on. Doing this left me with six stacks plus about fifteen
cards that were not assigned to a sheet.

This led to filling in a couple of loose ends that had halted the progress
on a couple of the sheets.

When I started working on them I was referring to them as the A-B, C-D,
E, F and G sheets but I think it will be less confusing if I start using numbers.

The A-B sheet had a back plate that was used on two fronts one of
the sheets has all SC 150/ 649 subjects and the other is all no print subjects with that back, this will be sheet 1A and 1B. The C-D sheet was also used on
two fronts and that will be 2A and 2B.

Sheet #3 is the one I'm going to start with. I always thought based on the
scratches that E,F and G or two of the three could be one sheet but I couldn't
tie them together until I put the scratches in groups.

I was able to connect E and F to make Sheet #3 and the key was these three
Wallace scratches that were in the group of un-assigned scratches.
0 Wallace Group.jpg

This is by far the most complicated sheet. It has several scratches and a couple
of them have spots where the scratch jumps up or down a little like they do
on these Crandall's.
Crandall [5b] Back.jpgCrandall [6] Back.jpg

Crandall was on the back left of sheet F and has three horizontal scratches that
line up with all three of the Wallace scratches. Joss was on the back right of sheet E and the three Wallace scratches match up with Joss combining the E and F sheets making these two partial sheets #3.

This creates a sheet that is at least 24 wide by 11 high based on the scratches
but it could possibly be larger.

Here is a small version of this sheet with the scratches highlighted in blue.
I will provide a link with larger scans for anyone that is interested.
Sheet 3 Full Highlighted.jpg

Here's what the front of the sheet looks like.
Sheet 3 (2).jpg

I tried to do the scans at 300 dpi but about 3/4 through it was to large to
open in paint so I had to use 240 dpi scans. This was very complicated
(there are 77 different plate scratches on this sheet). The hardest part is
lining everything up with different cuts and wear on the cards. It's not
possible for the cards themselves to line up but the scratches and printing
do.

https://imageevent.com/patrickr/upda...escratchsheets

There was progress on the other sheets too including sheet #1 that show
a double print of Johnson that I will post later in this thread.