Struck Coin Blanks ???

Bob La Londe · 2024-11-27T20:57:58+00:00

Every since watching a woman dressed in pirate garb at a renaissance fair (or faire if you prefer) place a blank in a set of dies and drop a heavy weight on it to strike a souvenir coin I have had in the back of my mind the idea to strike my own coins. I can certainly make the dies. 4140 is relatively easy to machine if you know how, and it will harden "hard enough" for a low production number of from a few hundred to a couple thousand coins. I also keep a bit of O1 and W1 on hand for those cutting tools I can't hand grind from HSS or carbide. I even have a propane forge in the back along with a toaster oven for tempering (although it gets used more for powder coating).I started writing with two questions in mind.Where to buy/make coin blanks at the best price? Not the 10-20 on Ebay or Amazon, but a couple hundred to a couple thousand at a more reasonable bulk price.I forgot the other question, so my second question is what question (or questions) did I forget to ask? Maybe what alloy would best? I suspect an annealed copper alloy of some kind. Many an amusement facility used to have a machine that would take your penny (and a dollar) and roll your penny into a souvenir key tag back in the days when pennies were still copper.

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Bob La Londe 1 year ago

I am aware that it will depend on die design. I have a 6 ton arbor press, and I think I would be hesitant to think it would manage a fairly detailed die impression, but I have used it for lots of other things including punching round holes in thin sheet metal. I've also got a 12 ton and a 20 ton shop press. Both are air over hydraulic, and actually quite slow. In the field at the "faire" a drop hammer is used. a relatively crude one.

"...a woman dressed in pirate garb at a renaissance fair (or faire if you prefer) place a blank in a set of dies and drop a heavy weight on it to strike a souvenir coin..."

I think if I follow through with this I'll stick with a drop hammer or a trip hammer until production required a faster process.

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Bob La Londe 1 year ago

... and at those prices almost exclusively shipped from China.

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Bob La Londe 1 year ago

I do have both hydraulic (import) and manual (Greenlee) slug busters. I had not thought of using them as a punch and die or as a die for another punch. Its not at all a bad idea. The advantage to purpose built is it can be made so the slug drops free. A pair of pliers is often required to remove the slug from a slug buster.

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Bob La Londe 1 year ago

Some years back I made some press dies for a company in Ukraine that was making "tea cakes" No, not cakes to be eaten with tea. Hard compressed cakes of tea. On the larger dies they were using a 100 ton press to compress the tea. They consisted of a base, box, and "stamp" that left a raised impression (embossment?) on the finished tea cake. Scorpion, bull, and some other things. I forget. I made them in several sizes.

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Jim Wilkins 1 year ago

I do have both hydraulic (import) and manual (Greenlee) slug busters. I had not thought of using them as a punch and die or as a die for another punch. Its not at all a bad idea. The advantage to purpose built is it can be made so the slug drops free. A pair of pliers is often required to remove the slug from a slug buster.

-- Bob La Londe CNC Molds N Stuff

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I was thinking of the older roof shaped punches that make one piece slugs, perhaps with the points rounded until the slug is acceptable when flattened. The dies could have a slug remover punch pass through the mounting bolt. Since both punch and die have center holes adapting them to an arbor press should be simpler than making and hardening a punch and die.

I save the slugs to flatten and use as oversized washers.

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Peter Fairbrother 1 year ago

Hmm, be a hecka lot more once Trump's in.

But I was thinking of using coins for blanks. Here in the UK post 1946

75/25 cupronickel florins are about 20p each in 1,000 lots - pre 1920 92% (sterling) silver ones can be had for about £11, 1920 to 50% silver ones are about £5.

Florins are old pre-decimal currency, once worth 2/- (2 shillings) or

10p. 28mm diameter, weigh 11.3 grams. There are also the slightly larger half-crowns.

You would have to anneal the cupronickel ones.

I don't know whether the US has anything similar. Or Canada, or Mexico...

Peter Fairbrother

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Jim Wilkins 1 year ago

But I was thinking of using coins for blanks. Here in the UK post 1946

75/25 cupronickel florins are about 20p each in 1,000 lots - pre 1920 92% (sterling) silver ones can be had for about £11, 1920 to 50% silver ones are about £5.

Florins are old pre-decimal currency, once worth 2/- (2 shillings) or

10p. 28mm diameter, weigh 11.3 grams. There are also the slightly larger half-crowns.

You would have to anneal the cupronickel ones.

I don't know whether the US has anything similar. Or Canada, or Mexico...

Peter Fairbrother

------------------------------ US currency has been decimal from the beginning. Canada changed from British to US denominations in the middle 1800's.

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Pennies changed from 95% copper to plated zinc in 1982.

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Struck Coin Blanks ???

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