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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Tom Maringer, post: 176884, member: 7033&quot;]<b>Making coins</b></p><p><br /></p><p>Hi Josh! Glad to hear that you&#039;re interested in making coins! It&#039;s quite a lot of fun. </p><p><br /></p><p>The very best book on the subject that I know of is THE ART AND CRAFT OF COINMAKING by Denis Cooper. He worked at the London Mint for over twenty years and the book is chock-full of great little details that you can find nowhere else. It&#039;s out of print and hard to find though, but I&#039;m sure you can get a copy to borrow through interlibrary loan or perhaps the ANA library. </p><p><br /></p><p>There was a type of gear-driven roller press that was tested by various mints beginning about 1530 called a &quot;Taschenwerke&quot; (turning work) mill. But it had some significant problems, and with the development of larger and more powerful screw and knuckle presses the taschenwerke fell out of favour. A direct drive gear press is usually called an &quot;arbor press&quot; but they tend to be very light duty... between one and three ton force capacity. It doesn&#039;t help to make a very powerful gear reduction ratio because the weak part is the teeth on the grears... with that much force you&#039;ll just break them right off! </p><p><br /></p><p>When you start looking for a press you need to think in terms of how large a coin you want to make. If you are satisfied with making coins the size of a dime or a penny, then a 30 to 40 ton press will be sufficient. But the force requirements go upward fast as the coins get larger. A quarter will need 75 tons, a half dollar needs 100 tons, and full silver dollar size coin requires at LEAST 150 tons. No matter what size press you get you will always wish you had got a larger one, but the smaller ones will still have various uses, such as punching blanks or making smaller coins. (I have eight presses now, six of which are working.) </p><p><br /></p><p>The most active coiner-craftsman community that I know of is involved with making coinage for the various SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) groups around the country. They have moneyer&#039;s guilds and teach hand hammered medieval coining techniques. </p><p><br /></p><p>What part of the country are you in?</p><p><br /></p><p>Be well!</p><p><br /></p><p>Tom[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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