How to Make a Seventeenth-Century Token – Gary Oddie

This Blog presents practical experiments relating to the manufacture of seventeenth-century tokens. New token dies have been cut, a screw press set up with realistic weights added to the arms, blanks cut and tokens struck. The experiment has been instrumented so that the die movement and striking force can be measured. The force is measured to be about 20 tonnes and with this set-up the natural frequency allows a token to be struck every four seconds.

The practicalities and costs of seventeenth-century token manufacture are discussed.