Insulators Home > List Archives > CREBheads > 2004 > October > 003
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From: Lee Brewer
Date: October 12, 2004
Subject: CD 145 CREB YOG SN20
One question - did you guys make a mask of the embossing to compare it [(the YOG SN20 CREBs)]? Chris has done this for me before.
Lee
From: Elton Gish
Date: October 13, 2004
Subject: Re: Dark Yellow Green CREBs (front side)
Lee,
So how do you make a mask?
Elton
From: Lee Brewer
Date: October 14, 2004
Subject: "Masking" a CREB
Hi Elton,
I am also sending this through the CREBhead mail as it may come in handy for others. I have already had people send me masks before to ID some pieces.
I take a strip of acetate - normally pick up a pack of school report covers at the dollar store and cut them into 2 1/4 " strips. Take a strip and lay it across the crown such that the embossing is covered. I do not include the SN itself - see reasons farther down in the reading. Tape one end of the acetate down to the crown (to hold it tightly). Electrical tape works great as it comes back off the glass with no trouble and can be re-re-re-re-re-(you get the idea)-used for many masks to be made. Pull the acetate tight and tape the other end. Make sure the embossing can be traced easily - sometimes I need re-position the acetate, as the spherical nature of the dome will make it hard to trace the top and bottom lettering.
Take a fine tip, indelible marker (Scripto brand works best of what I have found) and trace the embossing. I find it is not necessary to produce a 'photograph'; however, I do try to be as accurate as possible by carefully tracing the embossing - trying to stay centered on each letter (remember, these are raised letters and therefore some have a peak to them). It is the letter spacing (with respect to one another) that distinguishes one mould from another. Most, if not all, of the embossing was done by hand and therefore the spacing and lettering seems never to be exact from one mould to another. When you DO lay a mask on an identical piece, the letters match up to the mask perfectly - although I have found cases where the glass slipped in the mould and caused the embossing to 'move' somewhat - this is the rare case, not the norm.
Bill Meier actually came up with this method. He did it on a whim one day at a show. He took some packaging tape, sticky side out, and a felt tip pen to trace the skirt embossing of a Hemingray piece. He then folded the sticky side down onto what he had traced on the lower half of the tape. When he shared this idea with me I jokingly called it a Meier Mask - but liked the term so I stuck with it!
I could not get my masks to quit sticking to one another (no matter how well I trimmed them) and therefore came up with a variation on the idea and use acetate instead. Out of approx. 260 masks (one for each variant of CREB145 - F-crown and (where applicable) R-crown), I have not found any two which can be mistaken for one another when they are compared (on the pieces themselves, or with one another by laying a mask on a mask).
The reason behind not including the SN itself on the mask is that some SN's variants have their SN so close looking to each other (as is the case with the three SN20 moulds that have been cataloged so far) that the tracing of the SN might not reveal the subtle differences in the SN's themselves. The crown embossing on these pieces is definitely different though as can easily be determined by the masks.
Lee
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