| Description | Mints and Mint Engines
[Portfolio 5/710 contains drawings of three engines ordered for the Danish Government by Olaus Warberg in Dec. 1804. These were a 10 horse engine which appears to have been for an oil mill at Scotsburg, and an 8 horse and a 20 horse engine for working bellows and forge machinery respectively in Copenhagen, possibly at a Government foundry. The drawings for all three of these engines were originally placed in Book No. 538. At the same time, Warberg was placing the orders for the Danish Mint machinery and a 14 horse power engine to drive it. Drawings for the mint machinery were placed in Book No. 539, but it is unclear where the drawings for the engine were placed. The distinction between the government and mint orders appears to have become blurred, as the Drawing Office Index describes both books as being of Danish Mint drawings. This probably led Henry Hazleton to assume that all the engines were actually for the Danish Mint, and he listed them all as mint engines in the Catalogue of Old Engines. However drawings for the actual 14 horse power Danish Mint engine are now wanting.
Only five drawings of the Danish Mint machinery have been tentatively identified: a sheet of various reverse drawings; a coloured but untitled drawing of a coining press; a tracing of the same press; a drawing of part of the cutting out machinery, and a fragment of a tracing, possibly of cutting out machinery. The sheet of reverse drawings was found in the British Mint portfolio (Portfolio 5/716). Three pieces of the tracing of the coining press and the fragment of the other tracing were found among the Danish Forge engine drawings, while the coloured drawing of the press, the missing piece of the tracing of it and the cutting out machinery drawing were found among undated items at the end of the Soho Mint drawings in Portfolio 714. The fact that the paper of the coloured coining press is watermarked 1805, the year that the Danish Mint was made, and the fact that most of the tracing of it was found among other Danish material would seem to suggest that these drawings are of a press for the Danish Mint.]
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