“Shifting Windowed Thread” curiosity.

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I’m sure everyone already knows there are four exposed sections of the shifting windowed thread on all notes, I wanted to share a few that I found that don’t. This first picture is just an example of a regular note to compare if you like.

{http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/5394/firstpicturee.jpg:http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/5394/firstpicturee.th.jpg}

Although these exposed sections will drift a little closer to the edges there is always only four showing. I can only guess how a sheet is designed with these threads in mind because I’ve never actually seen an uncut sheet, but I believed there is a larger space left between every fourth exposed section so when the sheet is cut there’s enough leeway so there will only be four sections exposed per note. Here is an example of how the exposed sections have drifted quite high and how it shows a large space has been left at the bottom. Almost all the notes I’ve examined do this to some degree.

 {http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/6514/secondpicture.jpg:http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/6514/secondpicture.th.jpg}

I was determined to find a note with a fifth section exposed. It didn’t take to long and I found one and then another and another, one in every hundred notes I searched had one. You can see from the picture, where the four exposed sections are and where the fifth exposed section starts there is twice as much space left between them. So finding these convinced me that the sheets are designed with a little more space after every fourth exposed section with the intent to keep just four per note.

{http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/4396/thirdpicture.jpg:http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/4396/thirdpicture.th.jpg}

Well so much for that idea!
Then I found just a couple notes that the shifting windowed thread had not drifted to high or low but still had a fifth exposed section. This time you can see there is no extra space between the four exposed sections and where the fifth one starts.

{http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/6870/fourthpicture.jpg:http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/6870/fourthpicture.th.jpg}


{http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/627/fifthpicture.jpg:http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/627/fifthpicture.th.jpg}

The biggest curiosity for me is why I can only find five dollar notes with a 2008 printing date that have what seem like oddities to me, but absolutely nothing even close on any of the other denominations. Although I didn’t search as many hundreds and fifties, I did search many many more tens and twenties in my desperate attempt to find something similar, but still nothing!

So I asked myself, what does it mean?
If the five dollar note’s design specifications are like the rest and are to only have four exposed sections of the shifting windowed thread per note, then these with a fifth section starting must be errors in some way.

That's an interesting bit of research.  I don't know that anyone else ever thought of counting the number of exposed thread sections before.

I just found one of these notes, APP 0774607 (74/56).  Yes, it is a 2008-dated $5 note.

I took out a ruler and did some measuring.  The pattern of four evenly-spaced thread "windows" followed by a large gap before the fifth window is 6.6 centimetres in length (5.0 cm from the top of the first window to the bottom of the fourth; the gap is 1.6 cm; hence the total is 6.6).  The note itself is just over 6.9cm.  So the pattern is shorter than the height of the note.  One would have to assume that this is abnormal, that the pattern's length SHOULD be very close or equal to the height of the note.  The notes found by Hunter seem to show that when the pattern deviates, it does so in unpredictable fashion.

The note I found is a "mini ream" note, and it is presumed that the mini ream row is printed at the bottom end of the 9-row sheet.  The one thing that's missing from Hunter's post is the serial number and position number data.  Are these notes with five thread windows localized to a certain part of the sheet?  It would be nice if anyone finding one of these notes could post a reply below with the serial/position number data.

Here’s a list of some that have five exposed sections:

APN8614511 74/56
APS2069509 74/56
APS2159361 74/56
APU2644431 74/56
APV0794137 80/59
APV5794986 80/59
APW0929434 74/56
APW0969368 74/56
APW5514498 80/59
APY8514300 80/59

Here's one that jumped out at me when I saw it...

APZ 5849916  74/56

{http://www.give-a-buck.com/special/apz5849916.jpg}

All the notes with this peculiar feature have come from the bottom row of the layout.

Wouldn’t it be neat if you could find one of these notes that was cut out of register just enough so it would have five complete sections on it?

Well, yes and no.  I wouldn't mind finding any cutting error.  But exposing the metallic thread and calling it an error could be easily faked.  All one would have to do is take a note where the four windows are high or low, and then cut away the paper to make a fifth window.  That's why I have not been actively looking for notes of this kind.

I gave it a quick try and they’re stuck together pretty good. The fakes I made wouldn’t fool anyone.

APZ 2539506 74/56
APZ 4274015  80/59
APZ 8875482  69/57
AAB 1779139 74/56

I found several 2008 $5 AAD notes from the same brick (AAD 1474xxx 80/59), and they all had this "error" to some degree.  The nicest example is this one:

{http://www.give-a-buck.com/ebid/bank_of_canada/5/aad1474620.jpg}

It's clear that this is not really an error per se, but is very muck akin to the "missing circle" variety that appeared on early Journey $10 notes.  It is a printing abnormality that appears on $5 notes in certain positions of the sheet, and like the missing circle notes, the appearance of the abnormality depends on the cut of the note, though there is also a random factor in play with respect to the thread (i.e., it's not part of the design like the missing circle, it's a separate security feature).  All the AAD 1474xxx notes I picked up have the abnormality, but not quite as blatantly obvious as the above note.