Coin Ring Tools Do Not HAVE To Cost $1000’s - Low Cost Tool Recommendations

Hi, I'm a

coin

ring

maker for

coin

ring

maker.com and in today's video we're going to talk about the different types of coin ring

tool

s out there and what you need to get started without knowing how to spend a ton of money. Honestly, let's talk about why I'm making this video. Well, first of all, I like this

tool

here. This will

cost

you. This is a Chinese ring stretcher. This will

cost

you between $100 and $115. You will get a more beautiful ring stretcher. Like pepe

tools

, you're spending five hundred and six hundred dollars on that thing and I don't want the cost of getting into this hobby to ruin this hobby for you, so I'm going to show you the tools that I got from the beginning. to where I am now because I suggest starting with the basic tools, getting the basics out of the way, understanding the process and then investing in tools as you sell your rings as you go, so the first thing you will do The first step you should do to make a ring for coins is drilling a hole in the coin and this can be really problematic because you need to perfectly center the hole there or you will

have

problems with the ring later.

Now, when I started making calendars, I bought this Harbor Freight Punch and Die Kit and it's a good tool, I'm not talking about anything, but it's very difficult to perfectly center this coin under here and get the hole perfect without you know. , I added tools so I made this guide that allows you to put your coin in there and then flip it over and this fits perfectly with a half inch punch that will slide it in here and then guide the punch on top until it slides in that hole and that will give you a perfectly centered hit.

Now to do that you will need this port charge kit which costs about 40 dollars and then these guides which you can get on my etsy by visiting coinringmaker.com. and when you click on the etsy button, my favorite tool to suggest that the holes are perfectly centered is this little bug and this is specifically four quarters. There are self-drilling guides, but they are very expensive. I think this one costs 30 or forty dollars. It's on my list of recommended tools on coinringmaker.com and this is what I recommend starting with because you will get a perfect center every time, it won't cost you as much as this setup but it allows you to drill different size holes so that as you spend The more you

have

the more options, but as you start, I think you should focus on one type of coin ring, which is what I did.

I focused on quarters with half inch holes drilled and until I got them perfect, I didn't worry about different hole sizes, different coins, different rings, I wanted to make sure I could get them right, so these are my two

recommendations

for drilling machines, you don't have to go out and spend 500 dollars. on an automatic center drill, uh, and I don't recommend that you do that because, like I said, I don't want you to spend a ton of money on this hobby and then get disinterested because it's not working as well as you thought. It's a little bit more difficult and takes some practice so I think you should start with some basic tools so I'm going to go ahead and punch quarters with these two just to show you how they work and then we can move on. to the next step, okay, so I'm going to drill holes in these quarters in two different ways to emphasize the difference between spending a ton of money on tools and just getting the right tools you need to get the basic basics to get started, so like me.

I said this is my recommendation to start right here and it's very simple, you just put your coin here, put the cap on it and this is a hammer that I bought for a dollar at a garage sale and basically we can pass this over here now. We've got our center punch and it's perfectly centered and now I use a one ton arbor press to get this punch out, which I'll show you in a moment, but I'm going to go ahead and move on to my 20 ton press. which I spent I think 140 to punch a hole in the second quarter to show you the difference so this is my 20 ton hefty press that I was able to punch holes in much larger coins.

I needed to punch a hole in a dollar so I got this, it was kind of a gift to me since I had been working so hard, but you can use it on smaller coins and one thing I want to point out with this punch and die kit is that I've seen people try to center their I've seen people make holes here a lot of different ways, mark them, use pieces of paper to guide you here and you'll never really be able to get that perfect center without you knowing something like this, which is what I use, this it's a guide that I made myself because I had a big problem centering this hole uh before I got this I designed these um I got them at the same time.

I can use either one interchangeably. I like this one just because it's fast, it's compact. I can just grab it and punch holes real quick, but for other size coins, like a half dollar or anything else, I usually make a jig and use it like that, so let's go over here, this slides easily into your punching kit and die cut. and then you just line up your punch with the jig, make sure it's nice and centered in that hole and then we'll bring this down and you can see how much longer this takes than just using the hammer and that metal.

It sounds like there are definitely more options available if you get one of these presses, but there isn't, you don't have to start with one. I see I already ran into a problem. I don't have my plates close enough and the punch and die kit is coming off so I have to let it go, we'll move on, use it, place it right on the edge, make sure everything is nice and aligned, and try again, please Patience, I promise you there is good information in this video and it will really save you a lot of money. I'm sorry this is taking so long.

I'm still new to using this press and since it's a good tool it definitely works, but the point of this video is that you don't have to spend an arm and a leg to get started with this or even to make decent rings, starting to feel some pressure and we have to go through, so I like to keep pushing this shot until the center comes out and now. I'm going to take both of them to my one ton spindle press and take out the punches now, this here, this is my one ton spindle press, this is a tool that I recommend if you're going to get into making coin rings.

I used this on each coin ring a few times and it probably cost like 40 bucks so it's definitely a tool to consider so I'm just going to put a smaller punch on top of this one and just push it out that way I don't have to worry about damaging my dies or my punches, I mean when I take them out and then we can do the same thing with this one, put it upside down, put a smaller punch on it, just push it out and these just come out of here, you can see. I've got it up to the edge and I can take this smaller bump and just push it out, come on, you'll see how perfect it is, it's perfectly centered, no headache, no problem, the cut inside edge is something we're going to I'll get to it next, but I'm going to go ahead and pull out this other quarter so I can compare it, so here's the quarter from the axle press punch and die kit that I use the 20 ton press on.

You can see that. The cut edge is a little rougher than the one I used with the metal tool, but it's still a very nice center, no issues, so the next tool we need to talk about is the one that will remove that cut edge and it's called a deburring tool that looks like this that you can get at a hardware store for probably five to ten dollars and it's just kind of a curved cutting edge that's on a pivot that allows you to rotate it and get rid of all this stuff. uh sharp metal on the inside, so I'll show you how to do it right now, so I'll deburr over a trash can.

You can make it as a container if you want to collect the metal, but I just do it again. a trash can, what I do is I put this deburring tool here at about a 90 degree angle and then I turn it until the inside is smooth, so that's what I'm going to do now, I'm just going to cut everything off. that sharp edge there, so the recording tools are super useful. I highly recommend getting them. You could do this with sandpaper or maybe some other things, but to maintain the details of the coin, I think this is probably the best way to do it. and I just wipe them until I can feel they are soft.

I don't trust my eyes but I trust my hands and if they're soft on one side, I'll flip it over to burn the other side real quick. it's nice and even and I'm going to go ahead and do the other room real quick and I'm sorry if I'm going in and out of frame here or this isn't the best video you've ever seen but I'm really just trying to give you guys some good information that I've learned since I started taking curves, so I'm only 300 days into this ringing a coin every day thing, so I know what I'm talking about. and I just want to want to save you some trouble, save you some money, get you on the right path so you don't know to give up too soon.

The real reason I'm making this video is because a friend of mine pointed out post today on Facebook, this guy was basically selling the complete set like all the tools offered by Jason's Works as well as a ring stretcher from Pepe Tools and these are very expensive ring stretching tools like this guy spent several thousand dollars on this and the post said I only ever made 10 rings and I just want to get rid of these tools and I don't want you guys to be that guy so I'm making this video to show them that they can make coin rings without spending a lot of money.

So now that we have them nice and soft on the inside, we'll move on to folding and I'll show you my favorite tools for bending coins. Okay, these are my recommended tools for bending quarter coin rings, these are here. This folding ball and this domed block are not technically necessary, but I think they make a big difference and I'm going to show you by folding first with just these two tools and then folding with this. and then with these two tools, I'll show you the difference. Okay, so these two tools are a 17 degree folding taper and a 17 degree folding die and you can see the measurements, they're 0.9 inches and one inch on the side that I use. the one inch side to start and what you do is you take your d-bird coin with a hole in it and you're going to choose the side that you want on the outside of the ring.

I usually want the year outside. The ring is usually what I choose so we're going to turn it face down and you're going to try to get this coin as level as possible on this die and then you're going to put your 17 degree folding die on top of it and then just fold it over, you can see I'm having trouble achieving this level between the die and the folding cone. It's really hard to get this level perfect, which means it's hard to get it to bend evenly. Let's go ahead and fold it all the way down and this is what we get, it's a little crooked, not bad as it can be fixed, but it's not great, which is why I recommend starting like this, this is a domed block and a fold three-quarters of an inch. ball and you don't have to go find a bunch of collapsible balls, just grab this one and just get a domed block, almost all of them have something that attaches perfectly and fits on a quarter.

I think this is two and a half or three inches. doming block uh you can get them on Amazon relatively cheap. I bought this one, let me show you this whole set of doming rods that I never use because I don't like the way they tilt and move when I try to set them up. on a quarter it's very difficult to get them perfectly straight, I prefer the folding ball and let me show you why I prefer the folding ball because of this boom, look at this look, how easy it is to straighten this and it doesn't matter what I do. that ball is going to be right in the middle of that coin and because it's a curved shape, it's going to fold evenly all the way down, so we're going to be able to see a nice, even first fold of that nice, uniform all the way and then from There I will return to 17 degrees.

Excuse me, put the 17 degree cone. Excuse me on top, I'm burping and then I'm just going to finish that fold right there and that's what we get and I really really like that two step folding process, let's compare these two as best we can. We really hit it off, so this is the one I folded twice and this is the one I just folded with the 17 degree die and maybe bare folded. Mind you, they don't look very different, but this one is made much straighter and more uniform and that will make it easier to turn it into a ring.

This one I'm probably going to have to flatten out and I'll show you how to do it real quick, but you can see the curve on that edge right there because it didn't bend evenly, so when that happens to me, I'm going to put a ton of pressure back on it, step back a little bit and set it down. down here andI'll take another coin and put it on top and try to even it out, just apply a bunch of pressure and twist it around and these are just extra steps that you don't need to do if you can achieve that curvature. blocking that folding ball, this is just a pain in the ass, it just makes it a little harder to work on your rings, but that's okay, we've smoothed it out a little more, so the next step for me on these poison rings is to smooth out the cut edge because you can see it's a little bit rough and if we start stretching them they will tend to split along where it's rough. those micro cracks so what I use to remove these cracks and these rough edges from these quarters cut are nail file blocks.

I like these because they have like three different grades, so if I have a really deep cracker split, I can start with this rougher one. one and work down, I usually just have to use this lighter side and I'll just place it there and rock it back and forth until the cut edge is smooth as I do this, I'll periodically check that edge for any some trouble spot, but usually this doesn't take long and I like it a lot more than sandpaper because sandpaper breaks down and I go through it a lot more than these nail files and these. it just leaves a nice sheen, very nice and soft, we'll go ahead and do this other one.

See that rough edge, look at those scratches, that's very dangerous for stretching coin rings if you don't get rid of them. This is a strange angle. you can still see it's a bit difficult. I'm going to go ahead and finish this so the video is shorter and I'll be right back with you, okay? Now that we have our rings bent and sanded on the Cutting Edge, we need to talk about stretching them now, like I said before, this is like a hundred dollar ring stretcher, you can go up to 600, probably 800 on one of these when I started, no I had a hundred dollars to spend. a ring stretcher like this so I did a lot of research and this is what I used.

This is a super cheap mandrel that I bought at Hobby lobby and this is a piece of three quarter inch PVC pipe with a cap that I reinforced with Gorilla Tape and in fact someone commented on an old video of me using this that I should use as zip ties or some type of clamps to prevent it from breaking because it broke before. This is a dangerous tool to use, but if you're on a really low budget, you can do this for probably 10 bucks and how it works, you set it up the best I can here, real quick: you're going to put your folded coin on the end of the chuck here and then will place this PVC. put a tube on top and drive down and that will bend this, bring this edge closer and closer to the end of the mandrel and I'll show you how to do it right now, okay, so we have our mandrel.

I have a ring with the wider end facing down and then I'll just put the PVC pipe on top and hit it with my dollar hammer and you can see the bottom of the ring is practically touching the mandrel. Now we can remove it looking pretty good and then from here we can reduce this ring, but removing it here is a little bit problematic and that's when I discovered this hammer. I think it's a pretty cheap plastic teardrop hammer. I bought it for six dollars and it allows you to remove rings from mandrels without damaging the ring.

I'm trying to do this with my other hammer it would smash and destroy the metal but you can do it with plastic and it gets it out of there. the hammer takes all the damage. You can see that these rings really like to stick to the chucks, but you can take it out of there and this one is ready to reduce it, but I'm going to go ahead and show you the second way that I learned how to do it. Stretch rings with this tool is called a Rathburn ring stretcher. I think you can get them for about twenty dollars and most of these tools you can find on my recommended tools page on coinringmaker.com, so whatever you do, there's a base for it and then there's a rod that goes in and then you put the ring on the end here, you put the rod in and you put it in and that will stretch the ring, so let's go ahead and do it real quick now.

This here is a little complicated. In fact, I have to squeeze all these serrations together and then push them down like this, okay, and we'll put them in the base, we'll put the rod in there and then we'll drive it down like with the other method, you can see that this ring has some space between it and the stretcher, but we put it another way, we put the cut edge face down and we're just going to drive it until the ring band is basically even. Now, when using a Rathburn ring stretcher, you can use a metal hammer, but it's going to break it.

You see the top of this, it all mushroomed out of me using a metal hammer and you too will mushroom out the other end. almost to the point where it can't fit through this hole anymore, when I did that I started using my nylon hammer and it works much better, like I said it doesn't mess up the metal and you can still use the same amount. strength, so we have to get that peak out of there and I'm actually going to take this down one more notch. Sorry, my hand is in the way. I'm going to take this down one more step and squeeze all of these together.

I'm going to stretch it a little more to try to frame it and this time I'll do it with the plastic chamber, here we go, now that the ring looks pretty good, let me get the pick out of here. Now I'm not going to lie to you, things take longer with the plastic hammer, but you're not going to ruin your tool that's actually there, well, I'll use my metal hammer, I'm a bit of a hypocrite. I took it too far, here we go, now you can see those indentations that I put in it using my metal hammer just now because I got impatient and it's actually stuck in there because it's spread like a mushroom.

Now when this happens, you can take a file and file down the edges of this, but I recommend just using the plastic hammer, so I'm going to have to take a break and file this down, but you should be able to get this ring out of here without having to do that. I have a side project for myself. today we go okay yeah so don't use a metal hammer on your raspberry colored ring stretcher because it will ruin it okay now let's talk about shrinking these rings so we're back here at Arbor Press we have our ring stretched a little but one side is wider than the other, so that's the side we're going to focus on first.

What I do is I take my 17 degree folding die and I'll put that wider end face down and I do this. With each of my quarter rings, I scale them down to size eight, unless they are specifically for a client, then I will adjust them to that client's size, but since I am practicing while making quarter rings, I will scale them all down to size eight. I just think it's a really nice size to work with and to get there, I'm going to use another coin placed on top of this die and leave it really centered and then apply it. pressure and when I do this, I turn it and tap it a couple of times to make sure that ring is centered and bends evenly, then we'll lower it all the way down until the coin is inside the die, we remove the coin and you can see it's much more evenly folded.

Now I can see with my eyes that the cut edge is slightly flared, but honestly it's pretty even, but I like to put that cut edge face down and fold it over. a little bit too, now you can see here, it doesn't need much, then we'll touch it and rotate it to make sure it's nice and flat and we'll get a good look at that ring right now, okay? That's very flat and smooth and the next tool I recommend getting is a good chuck, so you've seen my first chuck. This is not a great recommendation. This one is made of aluminum.

It's not very heavy at all. It only goes from the ring. sizes 4 to 10. I definitely wear the trash from this, but it's not what I recommend you get. It is a steel mandrel. It does not have any ring size. It's very heavy. It is good for shaping rings, but not for measuring them. It's also not something that I recommend you get now, this one here is stainless steel, it goes from size 15 to size one, it's very heavy, very pretty, this is what I recommend you get, as you can see here, we have a ring of size 8 and this is what I recommend you buy it will cost you a little more than this one or this one but it will last a lot longer and it will be a lot more useful so let's go ahead and review all the tools and I'll say goodbye so my

recommendations

are to start with a punching and die kit and a good guide system for your coins or get a punching tool specific to the coin you most want to work on.

I suggest starting with quarters that way you can follow the measurements of what I have here and like I said you can find most of them on my website corneringmaker.com under recommended tools so I decide which way you want to drill the holes and then you're going to want to get a collapsible cone like this one. I bought mine from legacy brands. There are several out there, but the hand-me-downs are really good tools and aren't very expensive and you can also get a 17 degree cone. and that will help you bend and shape your rings and get them to the right size.

You can size down and shape your rings with these tools and then you have a Rathburn ring stretcher right here. I highly recommend starting with something like this first. move up to a higher priced ring stretcher like this one, make a couple of rings, make some sales and then reinvest your profits into something like this and then you will have your chuck and your hammer, this hammer is actually very good, let me try to get both . information there as I can for you, pick this up at the loading dock like I said for about six dollars and then you'll have a nice stainless steel mandrel with large and small ring sizes and these are my basic recommendations.

Like I was saying, you don't have to go out and get a big fancy vise, uh, a one ton spindle vise I would highly recommend getting one of these and another of these if you can tighten it, so these are the tools. My kind of recommended list is that you don't really have to get them if you can't afford them right away, but I highly recommend getting them as soon as possible. It will make your rings look much better if you can bend them for the first time. on a vaulted block I hope this video was helpful.

If you have any questions, leave them in the comments and I'll probably do another one of these videos as my tools get better and better, but I just wanted to post a sort of update on my coin ring making experience and provide tools for making of coin rings and how expensive it can be and how that makes people lose interest in it, so I wanted to show you that you know you can do it. with some lower cost tools and still end up with some decent looking rings, well leave me a like, subscribe to the channel and as always have a great day.