About: My full time job is being a husband and a father to my three children. My paying job is a mechanical engineer. Every once in a while I get a little time to work on a project. As long as I live to be 1,000 y…

Introduction:

Have you ever wanted to make your own coin or thought that there's just not enough funny hats and beards on coins. If you have you came to the right place. In this instructable I will show how to make a traditional hobo nickel.

Background:

I came across hobo nickels about a year ago and decided to try my hand at creating my own. My initial searching reveled that tooling can cost into the thousands of dollars. For something that I wasn't sure I was going to stick with that's a bit much. After more searching I found out that old-time engravers would use nails, old files, drills and whatever else they had lying around. Now that was something I could handle, so I tried it and it worked. Well my first attempts were less than spectacular but they are getting better.

So far my total cost for dedicated tools and materials is around $20. You can probably do it for almost nothing if you are good at scrounging.

Talent disclaimer:

I'll be straight with you, I am a complete hack at best. If you want to see what can really be done search "hobo nickel" in your favorite search engine and see what comes up.

If I haven't scared you away yet keep reading.