Low tech distributed manufacture of silver coins...

[Eli]

http://quicksilvermint.com/

So the link above goes to a vendor that shows up every year at the local renfest and uses a drop hammer to mint silver, bronze and gold medallions.  Half ounce silver medallions.  They even sell the hard parts of the press and will make custom die.  It has the added benefit of being really low tech.  Sweat equity silver

Does anyone see anything wrong with this method for an endeavor like Shire silver?

I've been trying but I cant seem to find a distributor for silver blanks or planchets I think is the term.  I cast this out to see what the collected wisdom thinks.

[PowerPenguin]

If you want to go for it but I just don't know how viable it would be in a real commerce (v. novelty) setting, given that economies of scale make it cheaper for the big boys to pump them out than you would, presumably.

[Lloyd Danforth]

At Liberty Forum there was a guy in the room with all of the vendors near the far door who showed me some dies for stamping a brass token.  I'm pretty sure his name is Dick Marple. He might know something about this stuff.

[Eli]

whoever put Eli-is-cool in the tags made me blush.  I don't Blush!

[Eli]

I just tried to register on the CNHT forum to ask if Dick has an email but, get this, my email is blocked and my username is banned. WTF?  I've neverbeen over there and I'm magically /shitlisted?

[Lloyd Danforth]

After Jane accused me of doing something I never did, I just didn't bother going back.

[jaqeboy]

http://quicksilvermint.com/

So the link above goes to a vendor that shows up every year at the local renfest and uses a drop hammer to mint silver, bronze and gold medallions.  Half ounce silver medallions.  They even sell the hard parts of the press and will make custom die.  It has the added benefit of being really low tech.  Sweat equity silver

Does anyone see anything wrong with this method for an endeavor like Shire silver?

I've been trying but I cant seem to find a distributor for silver blanks or planchets I think is the term.  I cast this out to see what the collected wisdom thinks.

I've heard of the RenFair drop hammer guy from someone else, as well. A drop hammer forge ought to be easy to make, but do you have the guy's contact info? If he's selling forge/press parts and will make dies he could be a very good contact.

There's a CoinWorld article about the process the mint uses and it should be studied by anyone wanting to coin their own, not that you would necessarily follow every step they do, exactly the way that they do. And, of course, they are highly automated and can make more per minute than you can, but that could be evaluated. The article might scare you away from wanting to do home-made!

Not sure you can get stamped coin blanks from an outside vendor, but I heard someone else say you can. Jewelry suppliers like Rio Grande have rolling mills to process sheet down to the right thickness and they carry hydraulic presses that you might be able to use to do your blanking (would need to have a blanking die set). It's likely that you'd have to use heavier equipment than the jewelry manufacturing stuff. Like any manufacturing process, though, you can probably find someone that you can sub that process out to.

[jaqeboy]

I just tried to register on the CNHT forum to ask if Dick has an email but, get this, my email is blocked and my username is banned. WTF?  I've neverbeen over there and I'm magically /shitlisted?

I have Dick's contact info - PM me and I'll give it to you. He posts on this forum though as "armlaw".

Someone on the CNHT forum must have added an Eli-sucks tag?

[jaqeboy]

http://quicksilvermint.com/

So the link above goes to a vendor that shows up every year at the local renfest...

...do you have the guy's contact info?

Oops, my bad.

[Eli]

I'll PM you for that info.

[jaqeboy]

If you want to go for it but I just don't know how viable it would be in a real commerce (v. novelty) setting, given that economies of scale make it cheaper for the big boys to pump them out than you would, presumably.

The QuickSilver Mint brochure mentions ability to coin 500/ hour on a hydraulic press. It'd probably be a much bigger problem to get those distributed and into circulation than to mint them at this point. You could coin a pretty substantial production run in one shift of 8hrs X 500 = 4000 @ approx $16/ozTroy = $64,000 cost of materials.

[Lloyd Danforth]

I trained as a repair machinist in a factory that had hundreds of presses from table top models to 20 tons.  Basically they have a spinning flywheel and a crankshaft connected with a clutch.  They are pretty simple. I'm including an image of one that looks similar.

http://www.kempler.com/product_detail.cfm/seqnumber_content/3256.htm