Five Easy Ways to Make EPIC Coins at Home!

greetings adventurers and welcome to Skilled tree where we learn how to do just about everything so for a while now I've wanted to learn how to make my own currency my own coins clever box if you will and since we're going to be running a business in the LARP that we're going to I thought it was a perfect opportunity slash excuse for me to give this a shot the thing is there are blessedly few videos actually showing how to do this thing and most of them employ things like CNC machines to get it done right I don't have that so I got frustrated and I decide anything worth doing it's worth overdoing damn it so today I'm gonna make this video for you where I've compiled a bunch of different techniques kind of on the sliding scale of like how expensive it is versus how easy it is to do though these for sure aren't the only ways to make coins I mean depending on what you want to consider as your currency you can really make anything you can trade in M M's it doesn't really matter you can figure it out but these are the way I found so without much further Ado let's jump right into it and level up this skill okay so as I said there is a very sliding scale on how easy it is to get these things done versus how expensive they are I.E the more expensive you go the easier it is versus kind of the lower budget method you're gonna have to put some muscle work into it so we're going to start with the expensive easy version and then we're gonna work our way to Hammers and metal now most of you are going to see things like a CNC machine or whatever actually cutting stuff out of metal I don't have access to one of those and I don't have any inclination I'm buying one right this second but I thought it would be a creative opportunity to use my newest toy in today's sponsor the creality Falcon 2 laser engraver again your more expensive option for sure but it's gonna be way easier than anything else now for the coin blanks the metal I'm actually going to be making these coins out of I decided to just use plain old washers they're cheap abundant and I don't mind the hole in the middle it's actually kind of a cool feature to my money now the design I'm going to be slapping on this bad boy is this one here made by my partner in Resident pain in the ass Crow Maddie so first thing I did was pop this just designing to light burn and size it so it was the exact same diameter as my washer once that was good to go I used the Falcon 2 to etch my design into the wood that my laser is Sitting on This Not only gives me a chance to look at the design but it leaves the exact shape so I know where to place my washer just as an aside the Falcon 2 has a 22 watt laser which is it's actually really beefy for a diode laser and I'm not used to it yet so I almost straight up burned like through my wood into my floor really gonna have to learn to dial that in that thing's no joke now I've read that metal actually etch better if you put some kind of a substrate on it that'll stop the laser from kind of bouncing off the reflective material and a lot of people actually just recommend the soot from a candle anyways with my washer in place I just push the go button and let this bad boy do its job and this is what I was talking about when I said ease of use this bad boy can etch at 25 000 millimeters a minute which is ultra fast so engraving this coin was done in just a couple of minutes and already look at how cool this thing looks then when I wipe away the soot it's even better the image is super crisp and clear and since I have the mark on the wood I can just flip it over and put it right back in place and just start it again this time I didn't add any soot just to see if it makes a difference and I'm gonna be honest once it was done I really didn't notice anything both sides came out looking amazing and again this thing was Ultra fast so cool again a lot of you might not be in the market for a machine like a laser or something but honestly this is part of that sliding scale if you want to do a lot of these on mass I would totally recommend getting something like this because it's going to save you a whole bunch of time not that you need an extra special reason to get a laser I'm just saying if you're on the fence I think you should get this laser I love this thing I can tell you firsthand this one the only one I've tried works great so if you're interested Link in the description below okay so that's the first method it's time to move on to something a bit more Primal where man and Hammer come together to bend metal to their will okay so basically the way I'm envisioning this working is we're going to make two dies we're gonna try to Mint a coin so we have two dies right one on the bottom one on the top and we put our coin blank in between the two and we smack it with a hammer to get the indents onto that piece of uh coinblank and as I said on that sliding scale it's gonna be more work significantly less expensive but honestly it wasn't that bad to do now for my dies I started with these big old bolts that I got from the Tractor Supply Company I'm not gonna let you I don't remember the exact size of these bolts I was more worried about the top of it because that's my working surface so I just got the ones with like an inch and a half worth of space to work with though these had some raised lettering on the top so the first thing I had to do was get rid of that this is really easy to do though I just stuck some sandpaper on my table and then ran the top of those bolts across it until it became nice and smooth giving me this perfect working surface now this coin is going to have a special purpose now though we're running a completely legitimate business there's gonna be times where we're gonna have to send a bounty after people to collect some money you know legitimately luckily there's a group of mercenaries slash Warriors named the Yeagers who are totally up for this task basically our thought was to make them a coin that would basically give them the right to hunt down somebody for us I like the black spot on Treasure Island for this Maddie made me this badass design right here has kind of a piratey your screw designed to it now I'm gonna tell you up front this next bit that I'm doing was a little bit experimental but I'm showing it to you because it's actually another way you can totally make a coin but basically instead of carving my design into the metal I wanted to see if I could actually electroplate it this would have the advantage of making my lines really smooth and honestly let me just kind of be lazy watch to get happen now I've covered Electro etching in this video here but it's worth going over again so basically I went ahead and cut those images out of some vinyl which I had cut with my Cricut Cutter you don't have to use vinyl in that video I pointed to I show you a different way to be able to get an image on but anyways I stuck that vinyl onto the surface of my bolt making sure everything was as centered as possible then I went ahead and hit that with some black spray paint once that dried I was able to remove my vinyl so basically when you're Electro etching anything that's covered either by paint or by like you know nail polish or whatever you're going to use anything that's covered is gonna stay and anything that's bare metal is actually going to etch away and since these are stamps I'm gonna want things to be negative so the things that on my coin I want to stick out on the negative I need to be in I need those to etch away now to actually make this etching work I need to make sure that bolt is conductive so to do that I just hit the edges of it with a file to remove some of the paint that it had and exposed the bare metal this will give me a nice point of contact to actually make that connection to help with I took some copper wire and wrapped it around the bolt head twisting it tight so it makes contact with all those bare metal spots this is going to give me a nice point to attach my battery to the next thing we need to make this process work is an electrolyte mixture this is basically just water with a boatload of salt dissolved into it the last real component we need is a battery to make this whole thing work I'm using this 12 volt car jumper but you can go ahead and use just a 9 volt battery if you want it'll just be a little bit slower these I connected to some alligator clips just so it was easier to work with the positive side I went ahead and connected to my copper wire hanging off the bolt for the negative decide I decided to use this big old washer on top of a piece of flashing metal that I folded up to make this little sleigh that I connected the alligator clip to as well I did this basically because I'm lazy the weight of that washer is going to hold that metal down flat on the top of the bolt making it so I don't have to stay in there and hold the thing now I simply put a cotton pad into my electrolyte mixture and then rest that on the surface of my bowl then just lay my little sled on top of that and start start the electro etching process as the current flows through electrons are stolen from the steel changing them into soluble iron ions which results in everywhere unprotected slowly getting etched away as you can see within just a minute when I remove my little sled here there's a lot of action taking place every once in a while I just had to wipe away some of what I'm assuming is essentially rust from my image and then replace the cotton pad with a fresh one now as I said this was super experimental but it was actually working really well until my paint decided to start coming off I don't know why it just kind of started chipping away so I needed to change tack but I still thought this was cool to show you because look at the etching on this bolt that is so clean this alone would be a cool way to make coins just slap your vinyl or whatever you're going to use onto your coin blanks and then etch the image in it looks slick it comes out super clean and it's really easy to do so this is our like little bonus way of making a coin here that's not what we're shooting for right now so carrying on I've busted out some of my carbide bits on my Dremel and just started carving away all the spaces I wanted to be lower this is actually really easy to do those carbide bits have no problem removing the metal and it took no time at all and as you can see with my test piece of clay here it leaves exactly the kind of stamp that I'm looking for that's only part of the equation because although I have the dies in order for them to work I need to hit them with a hammer I need a way to keep the bits all aligned up with a piece of metal in between them so that I can hit it with a hammer without them following all over the place luckily I had this 2x4 of Oak kicking around which I just drilled a half inch hole into that's just big enough to accept the shank of the bolts on the other chunk of wood I made a hole an inch and a half wide so that I can fit the whole head of the bolts into it now so whatever bolt I put into the bottom most one doesn't move around on me I wanted to cut it in so that the the head of it actually inset into the wood a little bit to get this done I just traced around it with a pencil and then went back in with a chisel to remove about a quarter of an inch worth of wood this makes it so that bolt sits nice and tight and doesn't dance around on me while I'm working finally with that bolt in place I just marked where it comes out of the wood with my hacksaw and then got to cutting that the rest of the way off so now you get a feel for how this whole assembly is going to work where the bottom most bolt seats into this block and then the other board goes on top of that which will help line up the topmost bolt which I also cut short this way they land right on top of each other and that bottom bolt is flush cut so it doesn't have any room to absorb the blood and this top one I'll strike with a hammer to actually make the imprint to make sure there's as little absorption of the force as possible I position this metal plate directly over a leg of my table so that there was a straight line to the ground then I lined up my blocks together and locked them in place with the clamp now for my first attempt the metal I decided to go with was some of this aluminum bar stock that I had laying around I just cut a rough shape that would fit into the space that I had then I heated up with my torch just to soften it up a bit once it was good and hot I dropped this sucker into the hole lined up my die and smashed the hell out of it with a hammer low Tech but look at how good this impression came out oh that is so badass the back side of it didn't come out as clean so I made another attempt at the same thing seemed to happen my only thoughts are that the ends of the swords might be a little too close together kind of bridging out that force a little bit or that I'm in a sad little weak man not swinging my hammer strong enough it couldn't be that not at all but I don't care because I still think that came out really cool and after hitting it with a file to really round off those edges this thing is a straight up badass pirate coin to put the finishing touches on it I just added a black wash and then sanded away all those highlights which made all the detail come out and actually made those swords way more visible now you can't tell me that doesn't look dope now I know what you're saying but clever it's aluminum it's a soft metal and you've got sad little wimp arms and of course it's going to take shape first and foremost your words hurt be a little nicer don't take any extra effort secondly though I also wanted to see if this would work with steel so I cut another piece this time out of steel I hate this sucker up until it was red hot with my torch and gave it a good old smack and yup this thing works fantastic again the back is not clear at all but I'm willing to wager if I put this on a more secure surface that won't absorb as much of the blow as this table and hit it with a bigger Hammer but I can make this I can make this in Den work the answer to all of the life's problems a bigger Hammer yeah all right so that was our second foray into coin making but I'm not gonna lie that was a lot more fun and although it was a lot more work it wasn't too bad to be honest with you can totally bust out one of those like dyes and maybe I don't know like an hour or so and then you're just smacking away making coins not only that but between the two coins there's the feel right so the etching is actually it's flat doesn't have much of a feel to it at all whereas in a stamped one like I can feel the shape of the skull and I can feel the shape of the little swords there's just something about that raised image that really feels like a coin all right so I have one more of you well I technically have two one's a bit of a bonus one I realized in the middle of making this one but again this one's gonna take the most work to kind of set up that sliding scale right but it is super satisfying to do for this one we're gonna make a mold and then we're gonna pour molten metal into said mold now I know a lot of you at home are rolling your eyes because you're like listen I don't have a Foundry I'm not gonna sit there and melt metals to do these things a lot of extra work to which I say shh clever got you baby you can do this on your stovetop if you want to that was that was creepy admittedly creepy can walk that back we'll just forget that ever happened so first things first we're gonna need to make a little like model coin to make our mold around now I could use one of the coins I've already made but I'm going to assume that you're starting with not the coin you want right the whole purpose of this is you want to start making coins and you don't have it yet so my easy solution to this is actually to bust out some of this super Sculpey clay this stuff's super cool because you can just kind of work with it and once you're done you can stick it in the oven and it'll Harden to be like plastic now I use this little pasta maker to make it nice and flat but that's because I'm pressed for time get it pressed for time you're here all day more of these I have the funnier I get but seriously you just kind of Smash this between two books to get the same level of flatness if you want I'm gonna make my coin shape I just use the edge of this shot glass which I just helpfully emptied this gives me a nice coin-shaped round Premiere you can get like your molding skills on just kind of carve out a little shape if you want if you don't like it it's Clay you just wipe it away and you start again not a big deal though again your boy's short on time so I'm just gonna go ahead and use the stamps that I've already made I just went ahead and stuck my clay onto one of them and then lined it up on top of the other and use my Mallet to lightly tap the indentation into place this is really easy to do and it came out with a perfect little shape on both sides as an aside though if you know exactly what design you want you want to Mill out a bunch of these things we actually learned recently that on Etsy you can get like the wax seal stamps for like 15 a pop you just send them your design and they'll make it for you just saying it's cheap and it's easy anyways now that I have that shape into my Sculpey clay I threw it into the oven at 275 for 30 minutes and it came out with this hard perfect little coin all I really had to do was clean up the edges with some sandpaper and this is where our bonus little extra coin comes into play because who says your coin needs to be made out of metal let's say you need to furnish a currency for a whole event and you need to bust out like hundreds of these things cheaply there's no reason you can't make these things out of clay bake them and you have them here to make them look extra cool all I did was paint it with a layer of black paint which honestly already looks pretty cool by itself but then to give it a nice metallic Sheen I busted out some of this rubbing buff here which is a super pigmented waxy finish that you can just rub onto the surface of the thing it gives it a super realistic metallic look and by going back over it with just your fingertips the oil from your skin helps give it a nice little patina now look at how slick that looks it'll cost you barely anything to do and you can bust out a huge amount super fast especially if you get like I said a little stamp to do them with and seriously from a distance like one is metal one is Clay you don't know it's that's awesome that's great okay moving on from that little side thought let's get to Melting some metal now the metal I'm using for this I got off of Amazon and it's a super low melt Point bismuth alloy this stuff mounted only 158 degrees Fahrenheit which is easily reached right on your stovetop and for my mold material I'm just using some of this easy mold that I got from Michael's it's a two-part silicone mold that has a heat resistance of up to 400 Degrees which is perfect for what we're using it for all I had to do was take equal amounts of both parts and smash them all together until I've got a nice uniform color this I stuck into the bottom of a little plastic carton that once held my nails then I pushed one of my clay coins into it about halfway down onto the rim of the coin I also added a couple of little dowel cutoffs that are going to give me channels in the mold one for pouring metal into and the other one so air can escape when you're making a mold like this it's important that you have a second hole for air to escape or else it's gonna kind of cavitate and make like a big air bubble inside finally I pushed in some little indentations to work as registration marks to help both the top and bottom of my mold line up correctly then I left it for a half an hour or so to cure once that was hardened I busted out some Vaseline and smeared it all over the surface just to make sure the second half of the mold didn't stick now for some reason the footage of me actually sticking on the second half of the mold it didn't happen I must have not pushed the button or something but I did all the same things I just kind of mushed up the two parts of it together and then I stuck it on top of the mold not a big deal but once that was all cured up the whole thing came apart super easily and the detail was perfect the only extra work I had to do was getting in there with my razor knife to cut cut the openings of those spouts just a little bit more so there was plenty of space for me to pour my metal into next I sprinkled the whole thing with a layer of talcum powder and shook off all the excess this is just going to make it easier for my metal to come off the molds once it's done now to make pouring the metal into the thing easier I just sandwiched it between two boards and set it into my clamp to keep it upright and together I also added a second clamp on top of it to make sure the mold didn't spread open now it's time to get to the good stuff let's melt some metal to do this I'm just using this small electric burner and a tiny cast iron pot that I've had forever inside of which I just put my bismuth alloy to melt it probably took only about eight minutes to go from a solid bar to all t-1000. once it was liquefied I just used this little Ladle here to scoop all of the draws off of the top which is just the imperfections in the metal then I slowly poured some into my mold until the Overflow came out of both spouts I also tapped the mold just a little bit to make sure any air bubbles made their way to the top then after about 10 minutes of waiting it was time to open this thing up and see how we did little spouts are thin enough that they just kind of break right up but check out this detail look how good that coin came out and after a little bit of cleaning up look how cool and shiny this thing is that is straight up a metal coin and they're not perfect I really dig that it makes them feel older like if you look at actual ancient coins none of them came out perfect they all have different weird little imperfections again I did a quick black wash just to bring out some more of those details and make it look older and I love this thing and is by far the heaviest coin out of the bunch and it's just so cool like listen to this here's the the stamp coin the business coin that's so heavy okay so my verdict out of the Myriad of ways to make coins I'm not gonna lie it's tough because it really depends on what you're going for like hammering it out was probably the most fun I think that was really cool but if I had to bust out like 400 of these things that would get old crazy fast that was a lot of work and the laser is fantastic like if I'm doing a whole bunch of these in bulk I can set that sucker and forget it walk away in like I don't know in 20 minutes 200 of them are done but they lack kind of the feel that a regular coin has that that raised feeling right so if you were in a cyberpunk life I'm not gonna lie that would probably be pretty dope you can get way more detail that way then of course the mold was super fun the Bismuth is super easy to work with nice and heavy though I am worried at like 158 degrees or whatever the melting temperature is if I leave this on my dashboard is it just gonna be like a pile of metal when I get back on like a hot summer day no but the beauty of all these techniques once you understand them is you can totally mix and match them like maybe you use the Bismuth to make all of your actual like coin blinks you mold your rounds and then you use the die technique to actually Hammer the shapes into them or you use a laser engraver on wood to make that indentation nice and deep so that the the the model you use to make a mold is absolutely perfect say if you have a CNC machine instead or a 3D printer these all fill that same kind of space though honestly in a pinch I kind of love the thought of just using washers it sounds dumb but hear me out they come in a bunch of different type of materials so you can have like one that's made out of brass you can have one that's made out of steel a copper one and each one is supposed to be like a different denomination of your currency maybe you hit it on the grinder and you make it more like octagonal and Cool Shapes or something if you're going for easy that's pretty easy but seriously use your imagination maybe your culture trades in shells instead or perhaps there's a really really rare nut that only grows in a certain area and the shells from that are currency humans are silly and all currency is is the thing we all agree has value as long as in your game you agree it has value it's currency anyways I hope you found this useful if you were trying to figure out how to make coins and if not I hope you at least enjoyed my Shenanigans here if you did why don't you give me some of that like it love and don't forget to subscribe so you know not release new content oh one last thing I really want to start highlighting a lot of your projects like a lot of you are on the Discord which honestly everyone on the Discord you guys are freaking incredible with the stuff you post but I want to make more of an effort to highlight you more often so I'm going to go ahead and start adding some pictures of you guys to my community tab here on the channel basically we're gonna pictures that you post there on the Discord and we're gonna highlight them and show how awesome you guys are so if you want to show off your skill or something you're working on definitely join the Discord and send it there I'm so excited to see what you're working on I can't wait in the meantime though keep leveling up you you made it to the end screen YouTube loves it when you do that it is a great way to support this channel another great way to support this channel is by joining these people's Noble ranks these are the members of my patreon and honestly without them I wouldn't be able to do any of this they wholesale fund this whole Enterprise and honestly they are my life's blood and a special thank you to our newest High tier level patreon member Jacob Converse said thank you so much again it means the world to me that you like what we do here enough to help support us if you like what we do here and want to support us consider joining our patreon Link in the description below or you can watch one of these here that YouTube thinks you'd like and that'll help too I'm just gonna sit here and try to learn how to walk a coin across my knuckles this might take a bit I'm not very good we'll figure it out though oh bye no it's so heavy

Channel: Skill Tree

Views: 246,782

Keywords: Making Coins at Home, How to make coins, Homemade coins, Minting, Currency, LARP Coins, How to make coins at home, Easy coins, coins blanks, coin die, coin die engraving, coin making, striking coins, cheap, easy, DIY, Casting, smelting, minting

Id: nqPMXY3MRaE

Length: 23min 43sec (1423 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 06 2023