Hi Folks, does anyone have any good info or links on how working dies were produced here during the late 50's early 60's? (ie: reduction machine etc).
Hi Uni.,Fred would be the person i think,i have books/documents somewhere but its mainly the era between the Wars and the role of the Sydney & Melb. Mints.
I'll have a look on the W/end.
If you get any information then post it as this is something that many of us are interested in.
Thanks guys, I'd more than appreciate any help I can get :winkextra:
Hi Guys, this is a funny thing, the lack of engineering information about the manufacture of hobs and dies in the Government mints.
There is the usual stuff pasted and copied from the Mint for collectors in all sorts of books by "experts".
The problem is how superficial that information is,................ at about high school level.
There is no actual information about the chemistry, foundry and toolroom operations within the workshops.
Having worked in industry in foundry, welding and machine shops I am acutely aware of what is missing.
The problem is the stuff issued about "coin making" by the "experts" was aimed at coin collectors and people in the "coin market", not at engineers who would be interested in the how and why.
Mixed in that is the class snobbery (of the time) where coin collectors assembled collections of unc coins but anything to do with making coins was the dirty oily stuff that the chaps in the workshop did and was not important.
Apart from the little that Bill Mullett wrote I am not aware of anything written by the hundreds of chemists, engineers, toolmakers and the like that worked at the Government Mints.
There were some fascinating web links 15 years ago from people that made their own coins and medals from hubs and dies produced by there own hands.
In those links there was a lot of metallurgical and chemical information to do with producing the steels and the foundry processes.
Most coin collectors have no idea how much engineering goes into producing the metal and the tools for stamping.
I could draw a parallel with the "car industry". The owner of some "hot" car is not interested , or would understand, how the pistons, crankshaft and block in his engine are forged and machined. all he cares about is boasting how many HP appears at the flywheel. Having been involved in engine development at foundry and machining level I take a different view!
I think I wandered a bit there but the point is information from the people that actually did the work at the Mint appears to be about ZIP.
Fred.
I would have thought that kind of information would be considered industry secret as to stop counterfeiters from having any help in making fakes?
Hi Greidion, no, not at all.
Let me ramble a bit.............
Coin counterfeiters seemed to be able to bash out any number of funny coins quite nicely without the help of the Mint!
Before the coins drop into the collection bucket, there is a vast world of metallurgy, chemistry and engineering that happens, unrelated to "industry secrets"!
There is endless web information on coin making in general that discusses the handling of metals in order to make coins.
No secrets there.
This comes under the general heading of Engineering. Should one have done Mechanical Engineering at TAFE or Uni, or practical shop work like me, you cover all the aspects of producing metals, making dies for stamping and pressing production. There are no "secrets" its just all Engineering and shop practice. When you do TAFE (tech college back then) courses you wind up with standard text books plus industry books that cover all the subjects from metals to dies to stamping. As I come from the 60's I have a shelf full of engineering text books covering these subjects, no internet then!!
What is missing is written work on the workshop practices ( apart from Mullett) actually used at the Mints and how they worked around being fairly isolated engineering wise from the rest of the world.
What you do see is the evidence on the actual coins them selves, of those struggles. Who did what and how, was probably as boring as bat dung and not worth writing about.
The Melbourne Mint was like a little engineering factory doing it all, in a manner seemingly not using the greater knowledge that existed in other engineering buisnesses that operated in Melbourne at the same time, making all sorts of things out of metal EXCEPT for government coins! I do agree the Mint must have been a "closed shop" in effect being a semi formal government organisation. The Industry captains running similar style engineering buisnesses must have wondered what the hell the Mint was playing at, if they wondered at all.
In those years who would have been interested in metal mixes, annealing times, press runs, production, except for the in house operators?
Not worth writing about, no secrets, just boring oily stuff that the lads in shop did to make my UNC coins.
Fred.
I agree with Fred. To 99% of the average collector and numismatist there is no interest in the nitty gritty details of the the running of the mint and it wasn't published (or possibly wasn't even recorded). For us hard core numismatologists we have a thirst to know things like the hows and whys of their practices.
WHY are some dies chromed and others not? WHY does it change from year to year and between denominations without apparent purpose.
WHY are some years coins beautifully struck yet others are rough orange peels with lousy rims.
WHERE they still preparing dies in batches of 6 like back in the 1920s or had they gone to some continuous production line?
WHY and HOW did they make hubs with different denticle sizes in the '53 florin and HOW did they get the denticle position exactly the same on the standard, medium and long denticle varieties.
None of this is covered in any book, article or blog entry that I've seen and there are dozens more hows and whys in the same boat.