Resources > Fake Coins and Notorious Fake Sellers

Zeno modern machine?

<< < (2/3) > >>

Flav V:
Thanks all,

It appear difficult to differentiate it from the marks made by modern machines. The marks left by the tool of an ancient engravor are similar as modern marks. Regularity, spacing... Maybe modern machines left deeper marks? I dont know. Im loking at Dr Prokopov photos and maybe the only difference is that the marks overflow on the top of the letters. unlike old marks which are limited to the outer edges of letters.

Ron C2:
while I'm no expert fake die celator or anything, a friend of mine engraves coin dies and banknote plates for the Royal Canadian Mint.  They use a powered chisel to do fine engraving, which makes the work a lot easier and faster.  They don't need to use hammers and they only have to use manual graving chisels for specific precision tasks.  Most of the work is done with these powered tools that vibrate a high speed steel (i.e. tool steel) cutting bit back and forth, simulating the manual hammering of a tiny chisel to hog off metal.

These machines leave a uniformly spaced chisel appearance under magnification and top engravers then take a finishing cut with a manual graver to smooth out the bottom of lettering, for example.

Here's a couple pictures of the graving tools I'm talking about from the 'net, noting they are specialty items costing many hundreds of dollars:







Professional engravers of coin dies would not be using any type of rotary engraver like you might see at a trophy plaque engraving shop.  They would use these small power chisels.

I suspect this is what Dr. Propokov was referring to, though I would not be expert enough to easily spot the difference between the spacing and uniformity of a machine chisel vs. a manual one that was hammered by an experienced ancient celator.

Din X:
I have modern hand cut dies from Slavey (I have pictures of the tools he used and step by step pictures how he cuts the dies).
And I have only dies not knowing abut the used tools of Tumbalev, Remoneda, Sicilian workshop and Lipanoff silicon rubbers and the fitting matrixes (they often used impressions of real coins and then recut and changed details in plastic and later made plastic electric conductive with graphite and then producing matrixes with electroplating).
I could not find on any of these modern hand cut dies these marks :(
The dies look strange because I use much machine oil that they will not corrode.
It is well possible that some forgers used modern machines to cut such dies but the ones I have matrixes from do at least have not such marks from modern machines.
Steel is soft, Slavey did not use a hammer for cutting, I assume that the steel dies will be hardened later after engraving is finished like in ancient times.

Hydatius:
Everyone is focusing on method and not style. I've seen a lot of free-hand dies and they never look like the real thing. All of these look fine stylistically.
Richard

Joe Sermarini:
Yes, they do.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page