Dear frogling;
To start at the beginning, the art of making European jewelry first originated in the courts of the nobility. Royal jewelers lived and worked either inside of the boundaries of a castle or within sight of the castle's walls. In this manner the leige was able to provide a certain measure of security for His subjects. Jewelry making was often handed down from father to son and it was not unusual for several generations of jewelers to be working in the same shop at the same time, however this was not always the case.
As in all of the ancient tradecrafts of the era, apprentices were being taken in to learn the various trades on a fairly constant basis. The family of the apprentice would work out some sort of payment deal and the shop master would then feed and care for the apprentice whilst teaching him a trade.
This system remained popular until the rise of the trade guilds. Once the trade guilds become powerful enough, tradesmen started leaving the manor estates and started settling in communities. As time passed, these communities ranged further and further away from the leige's castle and this is how towns and cities rose to prominence. Also, the rise of the trade guilds ushered out the fuedal system and in it's place arose a new period in Europe, the Renaissance Era.
During the Renaissance period, being accepted into a trade guild became a much more arduous process and one that entailed strict controls and measures. The time-honored system of a father passing his knowledge onto his sons was still deemed as acceptable, but the guilds further restricted the amount of skilled craftsmen working at any one place at any time and they also regulated the price of labor for the tradesmen of the guilds. This was also the start of the modern-ay trade unions and even today in parts of Europe the older trade unions still refer themselves as trade guilds.
It was because of the strict controls of the trade guilds that the local nobility often imported foreign trade workers, as was the case in England when the nobility brought in large numbers of Eastern Germanic silversmiths in order to ease the stranglehold that the silversmith guilds of England has placed upon the local economy. These East German silversmiths were called Easterlings by the British and in time the Easterlings became so well known that their name persists today as Sterling. This is how the word STERLING silver got it's name. The Sterlings worked only with .925 silver and over time, if a piece of silver was worked by an Easterling, then it was called sterling silver, being that it was manufactured and worked by an ancestor of the original Germanic silver working immagrants.
Therefore, while the trade guilds heavily restricted and protected the craft trades of the day, there were always those who worked on the fringes, or completely outside of, the regulations and dues of the trade guilds.
And now onto the question which you asked me:
To have produced silver coinage by casting would have been a relatively simple process during the time of Swift. All one needed was an actual coin, a two piece sand casting frame, some sand, a parting agent, and a source of heat.
The cope is packed full of wet sand then the coin placed in the center. The drag frame is placed on top then the parting agent, such as finely ground chalk or even flour, is sprinkled on the sand. Then the drag is placed on top and secured to the cope after which time the drag is then packed with more wet sand. When both halves are tightly packed with sand, the cope and drag are separated at the part line where the parting agent was sprinkled and the coin removed, then the two halves were placed back together then re-secured to form a two piece mold.
The mold assembly is then heated, such as by placing the assembly in a fire, while at the same time the alloy is being heated to the melting point. Once the alloy has reached the melting stage and the frame adaquately heated, the alloy is poured into the frame. After it cools the piece is removed and then finished by filing and polishing.
An even faster way of doing the same thing would have been to have accquired a master coin, or several master coins and have a master mold made of them. The master mold is of course made from an alloy with a lower melting point than the master coin(s) and once the master mold is constructed, wax coin models can be produced en masse.
Once the approriate amount of wax coins have been cast, they are placed inside of the sand casting frames in the same way as previously described, only without needing to use a parting agent. In this manner the wax stays inside of the sand frame until it is melted out by the frame. The advantage to this method is that a large frame can be constructed and 5 or 10 or even more wax coin models placed inside of the frame and cast all at once. Using this method a person would be able to cast as many as 25 coins at once.
Your friend;
LAMAR
