Pennies

[rstegman]

With the zinc they put into pennies, are they worth exploring for copper working type projects?

The idle thought crossed my mind about playing around with copper and I do have a lot of pennies, but I know they are not pure copper and might not work properly or look good when done.

[HWooldridge]

Older pennies would be fine. Some of the rarer ones are worth a nickel or so...

[rstegman]

I know about the older real copper pennies being fine, but I am wondering about working the modern ones, which I have thousands of.

how do they work, and what are the problems of the zink contents?

Thanks

[gerald]

Some friends of mine make little western hats from pennies in a small press/swage that they built. They tell me that the pre-'82 (??) pennies work the best. The ones that are newer usually wind up splitting.

[Don A]

The copper is paper thin on the new ones. For cold work, you'll beat thru the copper quickly. For hot work, the zinc has a much lower melting/burning point than the copper. You will burn the penny hollow in short order. In the mean time, you will be breathing zinc fumes. Not a good idea.

Not worth much, in my opinion, except $.01

Save a hundred and trade them for a dollar.
Save 10,000, trade 'em for a C-note.
Save 100,000, you got a a grand.

Better things to be working on.

My $.02 worth,

Don

[Mark Parkinson]

best use for pennies apart from Don A's suggestion is washers cheaperto drill a hole in a penny than buy a washer

[ThomasPowers]

You may notice that modern pennies have galvanic corrosion issues when they get bunged up a bit.

My use for them---putting a bit of zinc back into the melt when I'm casting brass

Or you can take a propane torch and melt the zinc inside the copper skin and make old Abe look a bit funnier.

I punch my holes rather than drill them for washers, easier. And for a strong washer a nickel is cheaper than driving into town to buy one...

CAUTION when the zinc is molten obey all molten metal rules you don't want molten zinc splashed on you---been there done that have the scar, (a bit of a zamac fitting hiding in a coil spring I was working on)

[noob blacksmith]

if you don't mind giving up some nickels there a pretty good source there 75% copper and 25% nickel

[pascalou]

Good evening with all, maintaining in France, the euro replaced the frank .what I do of the old parts of 10 franks (they were in "coppro-nickel")
A+ PL

[ThomasPowers]

very nice! Unfortunatly all our money over here is pretty much still in play; you have to go back 50+ years to get stuff that folks will look at you funny for and even that is still good at the banks.

I had my childhood coin collection stolen and all the silver dimes and quarters used in vending machines by the culprits.