[Steve Ellsworth]

That is not to say that you cant do well with a hammer and a chisel although the first two i did that way the other day were really hard to accomplish.

My brand x vise simply did not hold up to the impact of knocking a coin around with a hammer and punches. It really took a lot of force to make a dent in th darn things. Leads me to believe a few things about the art.

The hobo's who allegedly did these things in the old days were owners of very lare vise's and some serious tools. The rumor is that the carvers were not so much hobo's as they were engravers short on work. I read that somewhere and I am inclined to think it's true. Trying to carve one of these nickels hand holding it aound a campfire with a rock and a piece of steel or a pocket knife seems to me to be pure crap. I know American's are imaginative workers but to pull coin carving off with the finessse I see in some of these old coins just would require a jeweler bench.

Now while Bill makes it sound and look easy you have to consider how many of these puppies he has cut. He also has a reputation of being the top field dresser on the planet. Once you change that curvature on the background of the coin you are in for some real challenging work to make it look smooth and pretty. Concept being we are trying to make a coin out of a nickel that approaches a pattern dollar - in other words a minted, one off coin, not a carved one. Old nickels in good shape are harder to come by each day so making mistakes and depleting the supply is becoming an issue. Not to metion the cost of hunting them down.

The new releases of buffalo nickels are proving to be a viable candidates in the market. There is a lot of metal to work with and they are not hardened by age. They are much more affordable to work on and open the way to theme cutting with the large field area.





A good scribe comes in handy to do a rough outline of the work intended but after that it's all up to carving skill.

The hardest thing to keep track of is the relationship of the planes. Because the metal is so shiney when you work it it's very easy to get turned around spacially and have one area that is normal and another that is die cut or reversed. I have managed to do that in the past. It's really surprising to see the results of a combination positve and negative carving on a coin. Some of the master in the medalist society have incorporated that technique in their works. But they work on a much larger scale and have more room to work. A nickel is not so forgiving.

This years project will be to do some die cut coins just to see if i can pull it off. To my knowledge no one has ever tried to do it that way.