Ave!
Malcolm,
As mentioned last night on
Forum Chat, your coin is finished.
Here's the coin as received:
The next pix is after just a
bit of SBBBing, just for me to get a better idea of the coin's condition under the green encrustations and the surface metal. It get's a
bit ugly beginng here, so if you're adverse to restoration techniques - close your eyes.
Here's what I saw concerning the coin's condition at this point. The legends on both sides were
still rather
sharp and would need little
work, but the raised
portraits and Rx figure
had lots of problems; IE too
sharp. As seen in the before pix, the
patina was not
fine enough to be saved
nor it was neither pretty; it was obscuring the details, as well. So what to do?
I decided to remove all the green encrustations at one time with a four minute zap in
electrolysis. After the bath, I used a Dremel SBBB URW (under running water) to clean off both surfaces. The result is seen below.
As seen, the coin now
had lots more details showing, but also lots of
pitting,
sharp high points, etc. that needed
smoothing down. I began with a Dremel rubber 240 grit bullet tool, URW as always, just to smooth off the higher bits then SBBBed if off URW.
Next, I turned to a number of special 50 micron DD
tools (the same grit found on my DDDP's) to do some serious
smoothing in the open fields,
portraits, RX details, etc. These
tools are used dry, rather than URW, and in circular motions when ever space allows. Have a dry tooth brush handy to dust off the powder that occurs during this process. Below, is the coin after all the
smoothing.
Two thoughts here: sadly, the Obv punt hole upon casting occured right in the middle of the older emperor's chin. Not much I could do about that. The 2nd is that the odd-looking "flashing" seen on the Rx upper left quadrant is from the strike, rather from any tool use.
After all of the above, I placed the coin 1st in JAX Brown, then in Jax Green. Let it rest, then
Ren Waxed, buffed and below is the final product. I'm sorry to say that the pix do not give justice to the coin. I photoed it in a number of ways, but it just fails to look like it seen in hand.
Malcolm, not to worry; you'll be delighted with this coin!
Best,
Kevin
