Franklin Peale Peale designed a new machine to cut planchets, or blanks, from metal strips. This machine remained in use, almost unmodified, until 1902. Another of the steam-powered machines Peale had installed on his return was a milling machine, which was used to "upset" the coin—to form a rim around it. A Contamin portrait lathe was imported from France and installed at the Philadelphia Mint in 1837. Prior to this time, all coin dies for American coins had to be made individually, by hand at Philadelphia. Once the lathe was installed, they could be reproduced mechanically by the pantograph-like device. The first
Bell metal (representing Absolute and Relative Truth) is also sometimes used. A similar alloy is employed for the gongs, saron, demung, and numerous other struck metallophones of the Indonesian gamelan ensembles. In this case the tin:copper ratio is traditionally given as 3:10 by weight. Whereas bells are cast and then left to cool, the metal of Indonesian gongs and metallophones is cast as rough blanks which are then hot-forged to their final shape with hammers. Bell metal was used to cast many early Spanish, Portuguese and "Malay" cannon, most notably the Malay cannon known erroneously as "Rentaka". In Java, bell metal mixtures