Birmingham Mint presses and six planchet presses for making blanks from strip metal. These were installed at the Bath Street works, and in that year trade tokens were struck for use in Australia. In 1851 coins were struck for Chile using the letter "H" as a mintmark. The same year copper planchets were made for the Royal Mint to make into pennies, halfpennies, farthings, half-farthings and quarter-farthings. In 1852 the Mint won a contract to produce a new series of coins for France. In this the Mint pioneered the minting of bronze. Ralph Heaton III (son of Ralph II) took key workers
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