I own a living mint that does this exact same thing, except we focus on a number of coinage. Since 2012 we've been doing Spanish cob coinage which has been by far the most interesting and fun. We study everything from how the dies were made to how the blanks were produced, what type of tools where used to trim the blanks and the methods the coins were struck. It, incredibly has made myself an expert at spotting fake coins. Because I understand how the coins were made after all these years now and can say they are insanely hard to replicate even for the most skilled die sinkers. We just started learning the rocker die methods this year and it's been fun but challenging. We sell the replicas to keep the projects going. It's a lot of fun.
Exceptional experiment. Thank you for sharing this with us. I would be pleased to get more informations regarding the final results of these studies. What an amount of effort and work...my respect!
I'm curious as to why they aren't anealing the blanks before the hammer strike? Probably because the tourists. It'd take too long to heart each individual blank. But i bet hot flans took the design better and was not ad bad on the dies
Excellent video, thank you for posting! I think what you've discovered with the silver experiment is how Spanish colonial cob blanks would have been made. They are not as precisely weighted as ancient coinage.The sprue bases on opposite ends of the flan would have been hammered flat with the rest of the blank, and then struck between the dies. The reminiscent sprue bases are visible in specimens from that era (1/2R, 1R, 2R, 4R, and 8R silver denominations from the 17th century Potosi mint for example).
My guess is that the ancient Romans measured the weight of gold/silver shot before filling the tray with it and then melting it. This method would allow them to skip the whole step of carving channels and pouring it, which saves a lot of the sloppy work in this video. The next experiment to confirm my guess would to see if you can melt silver while its in that sand tray you created.
Thank you for your posting. We actually tried the hypothesis you are mentioning in further experiments. The result was very satisfactory even if the process of preparing the exact quantity of metal for each cavity is very time consuming. Other problems appear then, like the one of "rochage" but it should be possible to deal with it in using a furnace in "reduction mode" without oxygen.
Did you try annealing the silver blanks and hot striking. Also did you think about redressing the faces of the dies as the images fade. From what found researching this topic Medieval dies were good for about 10,000 strikes before having to be replaced. the faces often cleaned up and the shank of the die mushrooming out to a point it was unusable. The face being made of steel would be cut off of the wrought iron shank. But that was Medieval money. If I recall for Greco coins the blank was cast using standardized masters in molds of clay. the blanks would then be hot struck to ease in transferring the images on the dies. It can be seen where on some coins the blanks started splitting. I hope this helps.
If you put the mold on a angle and have it molded to flow down the middle and have the sprouts run to the coin from the middle. I think you’ll have better results as it gathers it’ll chill blocking the flow.
This is great! Since these initial experiments, has the team been able to identify a specific mold that has resulted in more consistent weights of the coin blanks? Or is this still an open research question?
this is not the technique the romans use to make the coin flans, they melt individual silver correct in weight inside mold cavities that no need to cut, go direct to strick,same system as the greeks.
simple they used wood and steel molds. they poured larger sums at a time as well. the stamping you got right but in most likely situation they used an offset anvil to stamp where the anvil has a hole to hold the die.
Wouldn't just used the lost wax method for molds or just a bronze mold where you just melt the silver or gold into shot weight it then pour the metal into the mold. That seems quite easy to do
I own a living mint that does this exact same thing, except we focus on a number of coinage. Since 2012 we've been doing Spanish cob coinage which has been by far the most interesting and fun. We study everything from how the dies were made to how the blanks were produced, what type of tools where used to trim the blanks and the methods the coins were struck.
It, incredibly has made myself an expert at spotting fake coins. Because I understand how the coins were made after all these years now and can say they are insanely hard to replicate even for the most skilled die sinkers.
We just started learning the rocker die methods this year and it's been fun but challenging.
We sell the replicas to keep the projects going. It's a lot of fun.
Exceptional experiment. Thank you for sharing this with us. I would be pleased to get more informations regarding the final results of these studies.
What an amount of effort and work...my respect!
I'm curious as to why they aren't anealing the blanks before the hammer strike? Probably because the tourists. It'd take too long to heart each individual blank. But i bet hot flans took the design better and was not ad bad on the dies
Excellent video, thank you for posting! I think what you've discovered with the silver experiment is how Spanish colonial cob blanks would have been made. They are not as precisely weighted as ancient coinage.The sprue bases on opposite ends of the flan would have been hammered flat with the rest of the blank, and then struck between the dies. The reminiscent sprue bases are visible in specimens from that era (1/2R, 1R, 2R, 4R, and 8R silver denominations from the 17th century Potosi mint for example).
My guess is that the ancient Romans measured the weight of gold/silver shot before filling the tray with it and then melting it. This method would allow them to skip the whole step of carving channels and pouring it, which saves a lot of the sloppy work in this video. The next experiment to confirm my guess would to see if you can melt silver while its in that sand tray you created.
Thank you for your posting. We actually tried the hypothesis you are mentioning in further experiments. The result was very satisfactory even if the process of preparing the exact quantity of metal for each cavity is very time consuming. Other problems appear then, like the one of "rochage" but it should be possible to deal with it in using a furnace in "reduction mode" without oxygen.
@@thomasfaucher5123 Are there other videos in which we can see your next experiments over the years?
Did you try annealing the silver blanks and hot striking. Also did you think about redressing the faces of the dies as the images fade. From what found researching this topic Medieval dies were good for about 10,000 strikes before having to be replaced. the faces often cleaned up and the shank of the die mushrooming out to a point it was unusable. The face being made of steel would be cut off of the wrought iron shank. But that was Medieval money. If I recall for Greco coins the blank was cast using standardized masters in molds of clay. the blanks would then be hot struck to ease in transferring the images on the dies. It can be seen where on some coins the blanks started splitting. I hope this helps.
If you put the mold on a angle and have it molded to flow down the middle and have the sprouts run to the coin from the middle. I think you’ll have better results as it gathers it’ll chill blocking the flow.
This is great! Since these initial experiments, has the team been able to identify a specific mold that has resulted in more consistent weights of the coin blanks? Or is this still an open research question?
7:45
this is not the technique the romans use to make the coin flans, they melt individual silver correct in weight inside mold cavities that no need to cut, go direct to strick,same system as the greeks.
simple they used wood and steel molds. they poured larger sums at a time as well. the stamping you got right but in most likely situation they used an offset anvil to stamp where the anvil has a hole to hold the die.
Wouldn't just used the lost wax method for molds or just a bronze mold where you just melt the silver or gold into shot weight it then pour the metal into the mold. That seems quite easy to do
Could the coins they are making in the video trick professionals and pass as genuine?
It could if they were counterfeiting them, but you can see that they put a modern date on the coins (2007), at least thats what I saw.
I own a genuine Athens, Attica tetradrachm from 440 to 404 BC.
Where can i get that read SPQR shirt?
Voir comment la fonte a était réalise me fait mal au cœur.....5min chez un bon bijoutier et il vous explique la procédure adéquate..
Your weights are all off because you do t pour coins. You cut coins
Y a engañar a los incautos coleccionistas noveles🤬