I'm a 16 year old Junior in high school looking to start blacksmithing! I'm a very . . . busy musician. I make a lot of stuff on a whim and most of the time it all turns out right. I've made instruments, I'm working on casting a couple of rings with cuttlebone (the technique is called cuttlefish casting), I've made stands for some instruments, and a lot of other stuff. If you search, in Google, "copper and silver ring", that's the effect I'm hoping to have once I've filed it smooth and polished it. I haven't gone through all of the posts/topics yet but I plan to. If anyone has any advice for a broke beginning blacksmith, I'll take it gladly!

Thank you,

Gideon

You may want to look into making mokume using US quarters.

Thomas, isn't that illegal? I thought that melting/defacing/destroying U.S. currency was a federal crime. I didn't realise it, but mokune-gane is almost exactly what I'm trying to do.

1 hour ago, Amolith said:

Thomas, isn't that illegal? I thought that melting/defacing/destroying U.S. currency was a federal crime. I didn't realise it, but mokune-gane is almost exactly what I'm trying to do.

According to the website of the U.S. Treasury:

"Is it illegal to damage or deface coins?

"Section 331 of Title 18 of the United States code provides criminal penalties for anyone who 'fraudulently alters, defaces, mutilates impairs, diminishes, falsifies, scales, or lightens any of the coins coined at the Mints of the United States.' This statute means that you may be violating the law if you change the appearance of the coin and fraudulently represent it to be other than the altered coin that it is. As a matter of policy, the U.S. Mint does not promote coloring, plating or altering U.S. coinage: however, there are no sanctions against such activity absent fraudulent intent."

Note those words "fraudulently represent it to be other than the altered coin that it is". In other words, if you're not trying to commit fraud (representing that something is worth more than it actually is, such as by altering a mint mark to make a coin appear to be rare and valuable), you should be fine.

1 minute ago, JHCC said:

According to the website of the U.S. Treasury:

"Is it illegal to damage or deface coins?

"Section 331 of Title 18 of the United States code provides criminal penalties for anyone who 'fraudulently alters, defaces, mutilates impairs, diminishes, falsifies, scales, or lightens any of the coins coined at the Mints of the United States.' This statute means that you may be violating the law if you change the appearance of the coin and fraudulently represent it to be other than the altered coin that it is. As a matter of policy, the U.S. Mint does not promote coloring, plating or altering U.S. coinage: however, there are no sanctions against such activity absent fraudulent intent."

Awesome! Thanks! I will definitely look into that!