As the Research Curator of the Royal Mint Museum, I am currently undertaking an AHRC-funded PhD focusing on the materials and processes involved in making coining dies from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries.
In the earlier part of the eighteenth century, it is known that German steel (fined directly from pig iron) was used for coining dies. At some point - possibly not until the 1810s, possibly much earlier - the Mint switched to using cast steel instead. A crucial part of our project is attempting to determine precisely when that switch took place.
The Royal Mint Museum holds a remarkable collection of dies from the period and we intend to analyse a number of these using a variety of techniques. (For example, we have been allocated three days of beam-time on the neutron diffraction facilities at ISIS.) In order to get the most from the results, it would be extremely helpful if we could locate samples of German steel and cast steel from the late-eighteenth century or early-nineteenth century to act as standards. If anyone were able to direct me to such samples, I would be very grateful indeed.
Many thanks
Joseph Payne
Research Curator
The Royal Mint Museum
Historical Metallurgy Society membership no. 50035 STU
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