The E-Sylum:  Volume 8, Number 10, March 6, 2005, Article 9

REUSING EPOXY GALVANOS

Last week, Dick Johnson wrote: "In addition to being sturdy,
galvanos are long lasting. Medallic Art Company once made
new dies from 65-year-old galvanos Calverley Lincoln Medal
of 1909 reissued in 1975 -- with perfect definition of detail,
no loss of original integrity. The jury is still out if this could be
done with an epoxy pattern."

Michael Schmidt writes: "I doubt that it would be possible.
Back in 2000, the History Channel broadcast a program on
the US Mint in which they showed the reduction process being
used to create a 2000-W (yes W) Sacajawea master hub from
an epoxy pattern. In the close ups it was possible to see that
the pattern was being seriously damaged/scored by the tracing
point.

(The 2000-W die was used to strike the gold Sacajawea
dollars that were sent up on the space shuttle. Also in the
same program they showed production runs of 2000-S
BUSINESS STRIKE Sac dollars! It took awhile to find out
what that was about. It seems that since the mint was using an
alloy they hadn't used before and striking a new coin design
they needed to do full scale press run tests to know what setting
they needed, or what problems they could expect. Rather than
use the regular dies they created the 2000-S dies so that the
products could be instantly identified as being for the test runs
and not production coins. I can't help but wonder if some day
some of these will turn up in the marketplace.)"

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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