The main piece of equipment I needed was a rolling mill.  This is a pic of me and my Rouselle rolling mill which squashed the silver billets from a thickness of about 1/2 inch to .0625 inches and increased the length from about a foot to about 6 feet.  We kept the rollers polished with diamond dust to impart a brilliant finish to the silver.

In the background is my small punch press that I used to cut the blanks that were made into the finished bar.

History

I started the Shields Mint in 1980 when someone who I dealt gold and silver with complained that there was no reliable source of one ounce silver bars.  That started me researching and the result, as they say, is history.
This will be the history of the Shields Mint.