making coins

You'll want to use high-carbon steel and heat-treat it. The cheapest is W-1, a water-hardening steel. Next bet is O-1, oil hardening. O-1 is more expensive but takes a deeper hardening and is more resistant to cracking. But I still make most of my dies from water-hardening steels.

Acid etching works! I did my first six or seven sets that way. I used a dilute mixture of ten parts water to one part nitric to three parts hydrochloric. That works well on steel. You'll want to heat-treat first.

Minting by hand hammering is tough work, but it can be done... especially if you are going for an early medieval look. Be prepared for blood blisters where your hand gets inadvertantly pinched while trying to keep the trussel aligned with the pile.

Good luck!

Tom

 

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if i did that i would mint a coin with eather me or a pair of figure skates on it.

 

Okay, I use Nitric already for my zinc plates and I do believe I have some Hydrochloric sitting around as well so that should be no problem at all. Its good to hear that I am going down a good path so far.

The look I am going for is something like this:





although I think I am going to do a version of this:



a quarduped reverse with a bust obverse with helmet and shield.

What I had in mind was possibly finding some king from roughly this time who might not have a known coin, and minting a coin of him. I think the toughest thing will be getting the inscription so that it looks authentic from the time period. The text on these coins are so difficult. I had an idea of using some of the known Pictish designs to make a fantasy Pict coin. But first I am just going to make a simply coin like above, possibly with no inscriptions as a test.

All these designs use mainly just lines and dots.

 

Dies of that type are generally made by using small chisels and punches to make marks in the steel, rather than etching. Etching will give you a flat-bottomed groove whereas these dots and lines have rounded tops. Such chisels and punches are easily made. I have heard of people using masonry nails, and just grinding several of them to make various shapes. You would only need four or five different ones to make all the designs on the coin type you pictured. It would be far quicker than acid etching, and would be more authentic looking because that's how it would have been done in that period.

 

I think I might be able to produce a design like the ones above with an etch then some manual work. I figure, if nothing else, I will probably just be etching a template. We will see. I have never done a deep acid etch. I have yet to get any metal for the dies so there is time.

 

I usually order die steel from ONLINE METALS. It's easy and they get it out pretty quick. You will want to get the W-1 tool steel drill rod in the 1" diameter (if that's the diameter you decide you need) It comes with a nice ground finish to exact dimension. If you can get by with 3/4" diameter I have a large supply of rough finished W-2 steel rod that would be perfect for up to penny diameter. And it's half the price of the precision ground finish.

 

So are you saying you have 3/4" rough finish W-2 steel rods you can sell? I can certainly get by with that diameter...problem is I do not have any real ability to work the steel so I was hoping to buy the rods cut to size (length) and pretty much ready to go. Does it being rough finished make a difference? Can it be used as is? If not then I might be better off with the W-1 ground finish? Sorry about all the questions but the more I know going in the better.

BTW, thanks for sharing the info. Let me also say I was very disappointed to go by your site and read about your problem with the Shire coinage...shame

 

Yes, have a pile of 30" long 3/4" W-1 tool steel bars here... probably more than I'll ever use. (I thought it was W-2, but on looking again, it is marked W-1) By "rough finish" I mean they have been sitting around and are rusty... but they WERE finish ground bars once upon a time... so they'll clean up to be very close to 0.750" exactly. I have a chop saw and could knock off a couple 6" or 6 1/2" pieces and turn the ends down square on the lathe. That would give you two ends to work on for each. (If you screwed one up you would have a second chance on the other end). I'd do those for you for $10 apiece, plus $5 to ship them Priority.

I've seen people do a lot of hand-hammered coins with this steel without heat-treating the dies at all. The hammer end will mushroom and the die face will begin to sink or "dish"... but you could probably get a hundred or so strikes before it got so bad you'd want to quit.

If they're heat-treated they'd last for thousands of strikes. Heat treating means heating them up evenly to about 1550 degrees F, a bright red heat, then quenching them in oil, followed by tempering in an over for a couple hours at 350-400 degrees F. The problem of course is that this is something of a pain to do. I use an electric furnace, which spins my meter at the rate of about 14000 watts while running and it takes about an hour to reach temperature. So I charge $50 to do a run. But these are small and could piggyback in the furnace next time I run dies... which will probably be within a month or two... and then I wouldn't charge you for it... but... I couldn't promise when I'd get them done.

 

Why? This is a forum, and it's interesting to see how this all works.

 

Okay, sorry about that. I feel I should say, just in case, that I am simply interested in the process and have always wanted to try to produce a coin. Mainly I like the artistic aspects. I have no intention of ever trying to make a coin to fool someone or cheat them....I have no plan on selling what I make but simply passing out what I manage to produce for fun. Me and my wife had an idea to make a series of coins with images of philosophers in Byzantine style, or maybe in the style of a Venetian Grosso... starting with Diogenes of Sinope. That might be interesting to try if I can get the method down and possibly refine it. Byzantine coins also have a simpler style (many of them) that I might be able to emulate easier. For now I am just going to do a soldier obverse and quadruped reverse to start with.

I did a little sand casting in pewter (lead free) so I was planning to try to use that in the first run. I also have junk silver but silver melt temperatures are so high while pewter softens around 350° and melts a little higher making it easier for me since I dont have to achieve a temperature high than say...500°. I would like to make a first run in pewter to see how the design looks before going to silver. Thanks again for the help.