Aircraft Aluminium Meltdown for Challenge Coins/Dog Tags?

[arod138]

Hello all,
This is my first ever official post on WIX, so forgive in advance if this is not the right place to post this question to the group.

First, I'm leading a group to restore a Beechcraft King Air 90, US Army Designation RU-21A, 67-18113 to be put on static display next to the B-52D at MCO. Perhaps you're following our efforts on Facebook, if not, here's the link:

http://www.facebook.com/138thAviationCompanyMemorialInc

or as featured many times by our good friends at Warbirds News:

http://www.warbirdsnews.com/warbirds-ne ... paign.html

End shameless plug.

Now the question I have is that we find ourselves with some scrap metal from the aircraft, as there was a slight loading mishap when the aircraft was being sent to us in Orlando. We got a replacement part and have installed it, and so now we have about 40 pounds of genuine grade A aircraft skin and metal, and the thought occurred to me, when I was a kid, my dad worked for NASA at the Kennedy Space Center. Before I knew what a challenge coin was, he came home and gave me a coin that was cast from metal from the Space Shuttle Columbia, so in effect, I had something in my hand that had flown in space. It was stamped on both sides with images of the shuttle and I've kept it ever since.

I digress, but I think you might see where I'm going. Does anyone know of a place, we can take this miscellaneous part of the fuselage, and have it melted down so that it could be recast as coins, or dog tags, or something that we could eventually stamp or engrave and sell as a fundraising item, a genuine piece of US Army Military Intelligence Airborne Radio Direction Finding history, from an aircraft that flew halfway around the world and back to two REFORGER exercises in West Germany, in Honduras at the start of our efforts against the Communist rebels in El Salvador, to Egypt and back for Bright Star 85, countless Peacetime Aerial Reconnaissance Program (PARPRO) and Counter Drug missions in the Caribbean, and finally a combat Veteran of Desert Storm.

Any help you or ideas you may have or point me in the right direction please let me know!

Thanks!

[Tulio]

Google "private coin mints" and you will find several options for your challenge coins.

Saludos,


Tulio

[ALOHADAVE]

I have scrap metal and melted aluminum from several famous crash sites. I was think the same thing about having the metal remelted into something more worthwhile. I was thinking about miniature planes in the basic shape of the original.
The miniatures would be made from molds so that I could make several until the metal was all used up. The places that do that kind of work is a metal foundry. you can check for one in your local area.
Another suggestion is to check with your local Art college, they may have artisans that would be willing to make the molds and cast the aluminum for an art project.
Please post what you decide to do and how it turns out. I want to do the same.

[ALOHADAVE]

another suggestion is to just cut the metal up into square pieces about 2 inch squares and attach them to a certificate and or photo certifying them as AUTHENTIC AIRCRAFT RELIC DISPLAYS.
examples here
https://coles-aircraft.myshopify.com/co ... c-displays

They sell for big bucks!

[p51]

I don't know if comparing this toi the space-related coins used with (very small %s) of 'flown metal' are the same with a warbird, as those parts are much easier to find in collections than things that have flown in space.
The only 'melted WW2 plane' portion I own is a section of skin from a 91st BG B-17 that was fused to the side of a piece of flak that was found on the floor after a mission. That part is the only remaining piece anywhere of that B-17 as it went down in the North Sea a few months later...

[bdk]

Why not make a keychain- no melting required!

http://planetags.com/shop/