I Believe This Could Be A Complete Horizontal Layout For This T206 Sheet

[steve B]

The Mullin has a scratch from upper left to lower right. That's part of a different group from the ones Pat has put together so far. That other one I think also has a vertical scratch or two.

While the Scientific American article showed Hoe #5 presses at ALC when they electrified, there's no evidence I've seen indicating any particular press used for any particular job. That includes the existing progressive proof books for cigar box labels.
Like any large shop ALC most likely had a variety of presses that would be used depending on how many of something were to be printed.

The scratches can show certain things, but not others. They can show that two cards were likely side by side on the sheet. That there's two cards showing the same scratch limits that to a possibility of 2, but at the same time, if one shows the scratch and another shows the same scratch they can be positively ruled out as being from the same sheet. Combined with a front mark like the one Pat showed recently they can show cards as being from the same sheet. It's hardly arbitrary.

There are a few things that need more research.
ALC was close to Hoe in a business sense, Hoe made a lot of different sorts of presses around 1910. Including both the flatbed presses like the #5, rotary presses that used plates rather than stones, web fed presses that printed not sheets but rolls of paper or cardstock, and multi color presses. There is some evidence that some but probably not all T206s were printed on a two color press.

There's a lot of evidence that most of the series were printed at least three times, and that subjects were reworked between printings as well as between series. 150's were done at least three times, and were altered before the 350 series, which was printed at least twice with a reworking in between for many subjects.

And among all that is the possibility (Almost certainty) that there were multiple sheet layouts for each series AND each back. That's especially true for the 150's where there's a handful of outliers that don't match up with a simple layout of single sheets. (Crawford wasn't in the Sovereign set but was in all the others. I can't imagine he was printed but pulled)

The scratches - at least one of them was deep enough to carry over into P350. Whether it was deep enough to survive resurfacing or the 150 stone with the scratch was altered to produce a 350 stone without having all new transfers laid down is a puzzle for the future.

At least one P150 back shows a doubling, either a poorly erased earlier layout or a redone misplaced transfer (Criger - Any others?)

So the simple solution of a sheet always being the same size really doesn't work.

Steve B

[Pat R]

Ted,

We will have to agree to disagree on this. I'm not saying all of the sheets were
this size but several of the plate scratch sheets are larger than 12 subjects
wide, this I'm sure of and I think the plate scratch evidence is solid proof of
that.

As Steve said the Mullin is a right to left plate scratch and was on a different
sheet. The sheet In this thread consists of subjects with left to right plate scratches.
At last count there were over 250 different plate scratches and 5 or 6
different plate scratch sheets. (I'm on the fence if one of the sheets is actually
two separate sheets).

Here's the sheet with Mullin on it.

[Leon]

Those match up nicely, job well done, Pat. It's always fun to learn of the processes behind the making of the cards.

And thanks for sharing all of the info guys...and for the good card discussion.

[Pat R]

Well I found out how good the template works.
When I originally made this template I only had Four scratches
for the middle line and they're pairs so they only cover two spots
on the sheet plus they're side by side so I couldn't continue the line
across the sheet with no other scratches to connect them to.

I acquired this Williams scratch after I made the template and
this afternoon when I got home from work I went to add it to the template
and I couldn't get it to line up, after some head scratching and talking to myself
I realized that I had put the middle line one spot to far to the right.
The scratches I have are Criger/Harry Davis and Hahn/Wilhelm but I had put
the Criger/Davis scratch in the Hahn/Wilhelm slot and The Hahn/Wilhelm in
the Murphy/George Davis slot thus the reason I couldn't get the Williams to line up.

I didn't want to go through the process of making a whole new template
so I just cut out the two that were wrong and taped new ones in their place
and made a new longer line with the Williams addition.
I still have to put all the X's back for the confirmed scratches.