Realcent.org

I noticed that atleast rodebaugh makes hobo nickels, and was wondering what would be a good starter tool to use for someone that has no experience engraving? Any suggestions?

blackrabbit is the man you seek.

This is funny.

It's like a gold rush now.

Everyone in thier garage pounding away at their nickles.

It's true the gold rush is on! The market demands more nickels! It probably happened like this in the nineteen thirties too when the hobos started doing them. It's cool to continue a great American folk art tradition! Buy some cheap used gravers, a sharpening stone, and sharpening jig and have at it. However, people use all kinds of tools that can damage soft metals. Hobo nickels make good investments also. You just got to look for the deals. I bought a couple for 20 bucks each last year and sold them this year for over 100 bucks each! I like that profit margin!

Thanks for the advice, i'll check out eBay and see what I can find.

blackrabbit wrote:It's true the gold rush is on! The market demands more nickels! It probably happened like this in the nineteen thirties too when the hobos started doing them. It's cool to continue a great American folk art tradition! Buy some cheap used gravers, a sharpening stone, and sharpening jig and have at it. However, people use all kinds of tools that can damage soft metals. Hobo nickels make good investments also. You just got to look for the deals. I bought a couple for 20 bucks each last year and sold them this year for over 100 bucks each! I like that profit margin!

Not only that, but sometimes you can gat a great deal on e-bay for your nickles.

You can get fabulous deals on all kinds of cool old nickels especially when the sales are linked from realcent! Here is a chameleon I finished this morning and am selling on feebay right now!

blackrabbit wrote:You can get fabulous deals on all kinds of cool old nickels especially when the sales are linked from realcent! Here is a chameleon I finished this morning and am selling on feebay right now!

That's really cool, looks like you used a nail punch to do the little circles?

I used a beading tool, which is basically a nail with hole in the tip, to do the circles.

BR give us a link to that auction.

BTW I think you are a better carver than you give yourself credit for.

Found it!

http://cgi.ebay.com/1934-Hobo-Buffalo-N ... 4aa50902ff

I'm having trouble finding any cheap gravers, the only ones I can really find are a set of 6 on eBay for I think $36 is that a good deal?

i bought a generic dremil at harbour freight for about 8 dollars works great and came w/ about 50 diffrent bits

I used to read this when I was thinking about learning engraving for firearm enhancement:

http://www.engravingforum.com/

Awsome site.