Ultra High Relief Hobo

[Scratchmo]

This is the second high relief hobo nickel I've done. I took a little different approach on this one by first annealing the nickel to soften it, then put it in a bowl of pitch so I could use embossing punches to bump it up from the backside before carving it. This one is quite a bit higher relief than the first one. Laying flat on a table, it towers to 7.6 mm to the tip of his nose which is exactly four times the thickness of the original nickel at 1.9 mm but weighs less than 4 grams which means that more than 20% was carved away. If I knew I would be able to keep the date intact, I probably would have started with a 1913, but the risk of mangling the date was pretty high so I used a cheaper host coin to start with. I did mangle the word "LIBERTY" and had to completely re-engrave it.

 

[mrthe]

Wow Ron,the relief is very high! Is not simple make that without damage the date or the words, i have traed in the past annealing some nickel but is very hard,is not like silver or gold for work,for this reason i think that you have make a great experiment !
I like it very much and the sculpting part is perfect like ever,congratulations

 

[JJ Roberts]

Ron,Thats amazing sculpture on that nickle,what if you where to tape the words liberty & date and use a dapping block & punch to get the relief you desire? Thanks for sharing.J.J.

 

[Willem Parel]

Very beautiful coin, I like this way of forming very much.

@mrthe, when you take a round punch and hammer the punchform into a block of lead and after that you hammer the coin into the hollow form you created in the lead, it must be going well without damaging the coin (I think).
You can also melt the lead so it's getting liquid you can hold the punch in it until it sets again.

 

[Sam]

That is insanely awesome, Ron!

 

[Dave London]

Ron
Great work, amazing

 

[Andrew Biggs]

Looks great thank you Ron.

I'm surprised that the metal actually stretched that far without fracturing.

Cheers
Andrew

 

[Donny]

Dude!!!! Stop raising the bar so high!!!


Donny

 

[Keith]

That's thinking outside the box alright........... Beautiful!!!

 

[Scratchmo]

Thanks for the nice comments! I actually have one more high relief carving in the works but it's not quite as dramatic as this one. After that, I will probably stick to more traditional carvings. These are just too freakish to fit into most hobo nickel collections. A few people mentioned they don't ever buy anything that can't fit into a Dansco folder for example. Kind of nerve wracking though since I often felt I was in peril of destroying the whole thing by cutting or punching all the way through it.

 

[mtgraver]

Ron,
You definitely have proved how inflated our money can get! Stunning as always. I must ask if you annealed while punching up my guess would be twice at least?
Mark

 

[willy]

Beautiful work,
Thanks for sharing.
Willy