gas checks from pennies

[looseprojectile]

Penny candy is a quarter now.

Life good

[singleshot]

A jewler's roller is exactly what I'm thinking...as I've looked I think the one's I've found will create .020 "sheets" not .010-.012, so they'd still be too thick to work with.

If you can get it thin enough, I think the few gas checkmakers out there (maybe Pat Marlins) would work. Maybe a screw press?

I wasn't planning on using pre 1982 pennies...too valuable!

The primarily zinc pennies get "minted" at a steady rate regardless of the ones that leave circulation for whatever reason. Therefore, the more we take out of service the more we can slow the devaluation of the dollar. Less $ in circulation = higher value, doncha know...more money printed (and coined) means each dollar is worth less.

Common everybody! Let's bolster the US $, turn those pennies into something useful!

On the other hand, I'm certainly not willing to spend a pound to save a penny.

[docone31]

I have several of these in my shop. The one with the flat rollers would do the job.
Plenty strong.
http://www.fdjtool.com/ProductInfo.a...oductid=RM1250
If you wax them between uses, they should last a long time.
You can get copper sheet stock from RioGrande.

[MightyThor]

You can roll them flat for free the same way we have done for generation after generation in my family. We put them on the railroad track behind the shed and collect them again after the train has passed. They will be thin. you may not get them all back cause one or two will stick to the wheels for a while, but we used to get about 80 % back within 3 to 5 feet of where we placed them.

[gitano]

Actually, putting pennies or nickles or quarters or ANYTHING on a RR track will get you in bigger trouble faster than "defacing" one to make gas-checks.

I've got a roller, and can tell you that it will take a bit of "muscle" to flatten your zinc pennies.

That said, I'd say "go for it". "Things" are best learned first-hand.

Paul

[Hammer]

"Penny candy is a quarter now.

Life good"

How is that "hope and change" working out for you????

[Andy Griffith]

IIRC, if you are using the pennies for "art" or other useful purposes and do not intend to spend them or sell them for scrap after being defaced...I *think* is the way it reads somewhere. However, I am no lawyer, and I have not tried it. I think I'd just wait until the penny is demonetized when we go to a one-world currency.

Jackets/gas checks are definitely useful, and IMHO are of the highest form of art.

Don't you agree?

What about those machines that you put a penny in and it smashes it and puts a design on it at tourist attractions? Those are art too.

[drhall762]

Anyone been to Disney World lately? All sorts of penny rolling machines that flatten a penny and emboss it with a dwarf or MM or whatever. Don't think the central government really cares. Drive on and get some!

[a.squibload]

Got one from the Alamo, and one from the Sears Tower.

[perimedik]

From the U.S. Treasury:

"..Whoever mutilates, cuts, disfigures, perforates, unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, Federal Reserve Bank, or Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such item(s) unfit to be reissued, shall be fined not more than $100 or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.

Defacement of currency in such a way that it is made unfit for circulation comes under the jurisdiction of the United States Secret Service...."

That's all fine and good however what about all of those penny swagers for souvoniers?


I guess Disney is on the hook for some fines

[uscra112]

The quotation seems to refer only to paper instruments, not coins. Now, in ancient times it was so common to shave a little metal from the edges of precious metal coins that there were strict laws about it, because coinage in and of itself was supposed to be a guarantee of the weight of metal. The knurling ("reeding") on the edges was introduced as a countermeasure, allegedly by Isaac Newton when he was Master of the Mint. Now that our coins are almost all base metals, it hardly matters. (Except for nickels. They are now worth more for their metal than the face value.) For pennies, it seems never to have mattered. I've seen a penny-rolling machine in a museum that had to be over 100 years old.

Making gas checks from today's pennies won't be much good, I expect. Pennies are mostly zinc now anyway. Not enough copper in them to make them malleable enough to draw into a cup.

[DukeInFlorida]

Um, NO.

Since 1964, NICKELS have not been made from Nickel.

They are cupro/nickel alloy ...... There's only about 25% of nickel in the weight.
Specifications

Composition:
Cupro-Nickel: 25% Ni, Balance Cu

Weight:
5.000 g

Diameter:
0.835 in., 21.21 mm

Thickness:
1.95 mm

Edge:
Plain

Source: http://www.usmint.gov/mint_programs/...ion=CircNickel

The quotation seems to refer only to paper instruments, not coins. Now, in ancient times it was so common to shave a little metal from the edges of precious metal coins that there were strict laws about it, because coinage in and of itself was supposed to be a guarantee of the weight of metal. The knurling ("reeding") on the edges was introduced as a countermeasure, allegedly by Isaac Newton when he was Master of the Mint. Now that our coins are almost all base metals, it hardly matters. (Except for nickels. They are now worth more for their metal than the face value.) For pennies, it seems never to have mattered. I've seen a penny-rolling machine in a museum that had to be over 100 years old.

Making gas checks from today's pennies won't be much good, I expect. Pennies are mostly zinc now anyway. Not enough copper in them to make them malleable enough to draw into a cup.

[edsmith]

what are pennies from canada made from?

[DukeInFlorida]

Dunno, but they are only worth 70% of one cent. Joking.
There's a chart at the bottom of this page, showing the composition:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coins_o...anadian_dollar

Apparently, they are steel, plated with nickel, and then re-plated with copper.

Ed, I need you to make some bottom punches for me......

[leadman]

What about using bullet jackets pulled from the smelt? Cut one side and flatten it out? Might not work due to the rifling marks on the jacket?

[kombayotch]

The US penny was 95% copper with 5% tin/zinc prior to '82:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Us_coin...in_circulation

And it's actually work LESS than the Canadian penny these days...

[Geek]

A little off topic here, but I think it applies... I apologize if it doesn't

I'm very new to casting my own "boolits", but I'm not new chemistry (and other sciences).

If I were to copper plate the lead castings using a copper sulfate solution and electrolysis would I even need gas checks?

The reason I ask is because it's very easy to copper plate metals with root killer (tree stump killer) that is mostly copper sulfate crystals dituted in distilled water (not the root killer you find in home and garden section, the stuff you find in the plumbing section of your local hardware store). Furthermore, it's very cheap... $7 for what I would assume to be thousands of bullets fully copper plated.

[VintageRifle]

Check with TommyT over on the surplusrifleforums.com. He was going to be doing the same thing you are asking about Geek.

[DukeInFlorida]

My own experiments with copper plating on lead bullets was disappointing. I could not achieve the thick copper plating like Berrys and Rainier get.

After some testing and study, the folks like Rainier and Berrys use highly dangerous commercial plating chemicals that you and I can't buy.

The root killer is OK for some copper plating (steel, etc), but doesn't work well on the lead boolits. The best I could get was a very thin copper plating that was brittle and flaked off. I gave up on those experiments a long time ago. Too many hours for too little results.

[toolz568]

It is not illegal to roll pennies! You can't make one coin into another. The problem is these rollers only roll them to .020. If you strip the zinc out of them, you are left with a shell that is about .001 thick.