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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Larry Moran, post: 562126, member: 4580&quot;]Now you&#039;ve got me, Svessien.&nbsp; I&#039;ve been told they were punched from planchet strips.&nbsp; Many clips show evidence of a pincer type cut, partially from each side, so I am guessing the most were punched by machine.&nbsp; It could have been a machine almost as simple as a leather punch.&nbsp; I believe the punching was done with a form of die.&nbsp; Punching by hand from each side would not seem practical as dies would not align consistently at all.</p><p><br /></p><p>In larger factories, like at the button companies in Connecticut, perhaps several planchets were punched at once.&nbsp; I have an R-7 brass token from one button companies, and have quite a few of their copper CWT&#039;s and tokens from another button company there, but none of them have clipped planchets, at all, so I think it may have been a different process.</p><p><br /></p><p>Tokens from those two companies also have finer strikes than most CWT&#039;s. Scovill Manufacturing Company has provided every brass button for U.S military uniforms since about 1802 or so. I believe planchets may have been polished somewhat before before striking;&nbsp; That wouldn&#039;t have taken much in a brass factory setting&nbsp; with probable steam power by then.&nbsp; Their tokens also received upset rims; I imagine that was quite a bit trickier than planchet punching.</p><p><br /></p><p>So in the biggest operations, I believe a circular shearing punch was used. In smaller operations, planchets for more primitive die sinkers may have been punched using the same press they would later produce tokens with, or some sort of similar press with circular dies.&nbsp; Many of the machines were driven by belts which ran to the machines from a steam-powered source.</p><p><br /></p><p>But I doubt that anybody was hammering planchets out of strips with a hand punch.&nbsp; : )[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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