Q. David Bowers
4. The second die, with the wreath appearing raised (in relief), was inspected, and any minor changes needed were made. The second die was then subjected to the hardening process, after which it was cleaned, and was ready to use as a finished punch.
A punch could be made by engraving the design in relief, rather than in intaglio, equivalent to step 4. This was done with letter, star, numeral, and certain other punches, which were easier for the artist to create in this manner.
Any punch could be replicated by hardening it, pressing it into soft steel, hardening the soft steel, and using the just-hardened die to press into still another soft steel blank, to create a positive (in relief) copy. This would be hardened, and used as a punch. This hard-soft steel transfer process resulted in some detail being lost each time, but this loss could be compensated for by retouching.
The making of design punches, such as the portrait of Miss Liberty, the eagle, and, to a lesser extent, the wreath, was assigned to a skilled engraver. The preparation of numeral, star, leaf, letter, and other small punches was sometimes done on a contract basis with outsiders.
Earlier in this book, R.W. Julian related that Frederick Geiger had been hired in early 1794 by Director David Rittenhouse to make letter punches for coinage; his tenure as a Mint employee was brief. On October 19, 1795, Thomas Bingham, not a Mint employee, was paid $48 for 96 letter and numeral punches for use on various coin denominations. (Walter Breen's Complete Encyclopedia of U.S. and Colonial Coins, p. 425. )
For some dies it is possible, indeed probable, that the engraver who made the motif punches was not the same engraver who made the coining die by utilizing the motif punches and adding the lettering, etc. It is presumed that over the years duplicate punches were made of letters used frequently, such as in the familiar (today) E (most frequently used letter), T, A, O, I, N, S, H, R, D, L, U, etc., sequence, although for coinage in the 1790s, the letters in commonly used inscriptions such as LIBERTY and UNITED STATES OF AMERICA were those for which duplicates were needed. Examination of 1796-1797 coins reveals that two different "Small Letters" E punches were used on dollars, for example.
Making dies: An obverse die for a 1795 silver dollar was made by punching the portrait into a die blank of soft steel. Probably, LIBERTY was added next, then the stars, and finally the date.
To make a reverse die for a 1795 silver dollar, the finished eagle motif punch was used to impress the eagle design into the center of a soft steel coining die. After this was done, the wreath punch was used. Then, wreath stems, ribbon ends, and letters of UNITED STATES OF AMERICA were added, and the coining die went through the hardening process. Then it was cleaned and made ready for use in a coining press.
The classification of die varieties today is accomplished by studying the positions of these elements in relation to each other.
Classifying 1795 Dollar
Obverse Die Styles
(Flowing Hair type)
There were two different portrait punches used on obverse dies for 1795 Flowing Hair dollars and two different eagle punches used on reverse dies. In addition, reverses were made in two different styles of wreaths: These are described below:
PI Portrait: "Head of 1794." The Head of 1794 portrait was made from a master punch depicting Miss Liberty with rounded cheek and prominent jaw line. There is no double line under bust truncation. The bust point is blunter than on the following (Head of 1795). At the back of the head, the highest curl is thin. All of these portrait characteristics are also found on the 1794 silver dollar.
No 1795 head is exactly like 1794, as hair details were finished by hand. However, dollars from the PI portrait punch come quite close. It is believed that this punch die was the work of Robert Scot, on the knowledge that as of the initial delivery of 1794 dollars on October 15, 1794, Scot was the chief engraver at the Mint. (An assistant, John Smith Gardner, was hired in November 1794, and continued at the Mint intermittently until summer 1796.) The dies could have been finished by either Scot or Gardner, by punching the stars, letters of LIBERTY, and date. It is popular to suggest that the chief engraver (in this case, Scot) did the main design work, and the assistant (Gardner) did the routine job of making dies. In actuality, probably the work was divided. Once the motif punches were made (and this was done only at widely separated intervals as new designs or replacement punches were called for), the primary work for the chief engraver and his assistant was creating dies.