How did people cut "pieces of eight"?

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The usual method was with a hammer and a cold chisel. A large stone would suffice as an anvil. Coins are fairly small and thin, and the silver coins of the period were quite soft, as you can see from the wear on the example in your picture. A blacksmith would be able to do this easily, as would almost anyone with basic metal-working skills and tools. Blacksmiths were more common in period than today, of course, and a higher proportion of people would have owned the necessary tools.

The division of coins into halves, quarters and eighths follows naturally from cutting them by hand. It's much easier to cut things into successive halves with reasonable accuracy than it is to cut tenths.

John Dallman 31010

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Source: stackoverflow.com

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