Electrotype was also used to manufacture matrices that could be used as moulds for individual pieces of metal type. This had several advantages over traditional punchcutting in hard steel: the type master only needed to be carved out of soft metal, and was also useful for large sizes of type, since it was hard to drive large punches into a matrix effectively. It cut the cost of decorative types that would not be used so often as body text typefaces. On the other hand, it gave no steel punch that could be used to create multiple matrices quickly, and was reported to not always give such good results as steel punchcutting.