What do U.S. Mint engravers do when they make a mistake?

Every once in a while I see documentaries about the U.S. Mint on various cable channels. The story is always quite fascinating, documenting the process by which U.S. bank notes are printed. They inevitably show some poor guy hunched over a steel plate, holding a thick magnifying lens and a manual engraving tool. As the story goes, no one engraver does all of the work: some do numbers, others portraits, and still others signatures.

My question is this: Do they have to do an entire plate to perfection? Is there some patch substance that they can use if they make an error? It seems like a tall order for umpteen specialists to all add their bits to a plate without somebody being distracted for a minute and adding an unwanted line.

Noteworthy nitpickery: Paper money is made by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Coins are made by the US Mint.

Carry on.

These guys have been doing this for a long time, and they don’t have to copy anything exactly, once a note is engraved it will be used as the master for as long as that note is in circulation. If they make a mistake they can easily incorporate it into the design, just like a gun engraver would.

I’d have thought this sort of thing would all be done by CAD now; is that not the case?

No, it is still engraved by hand:

Bureau of Engraving and Printing

How the hell could I make such a silly error as that. I guess I was paying more attention to how to best phrase the question while messing up stuff that I darn well better know after so many History Channel specials on coins and paper money.

This is just the type of thing I would snicker at if someone else did it.

Embarrassing.

In the early 1800’s, a mint engraver(coins) took weeks to months to engrave an actual working die. Let’s say, one that would be used for an 1817 half dollar. That was an investment in time and money. If they had left-over dies at the end of 1817, they would re-engrave(punch, actually) an eight over the seven(which they tried to remove as best the could). It didn’t always work. So, you got “overdates” on coins in the 1800’s. This has happened in the 1900’s also, but less frequently. I think micro-engraving tools have probably changed things dramatically.

Of course, Tamerlane didn’t call me a drooling idiot. I just haven’t learned how to post in this new format, and hit a wrong button, yadda yadda.

NOW this isn’t funny. WHY do I have a sig line?

The new version apparently defaults to posting your sig unless you tell it not to. No doubt this is the first thing TPTB will fix when they get the chance.