For Sculptor, 6,400 nickels add up to $320--or an $18,000 couch

NEW YORK. John Swing is an alchemist of sorts. The Brookline, Vt., sculptor has drawn more value from nickels than most miners have managed to squeeze from the base metal recently.

Nickel coins are cast from a cupronickel composite that lends itself to welding better than pennies and most other coins. Nickel is well suited for metalworking because it dissipates heat and is porous enough to accept most welds while still retaining an aesthetic luster.

Swing spent more than 200 hours welding 6,400 nickels into a 110-pound metallic couch--turning $320 worth of coins into a piece of art tagged at $18,000. At today's London Metal Exchange prices, 110 pounds of nickel would be worth $297.

Swing's creative use of his Class 1 structural steel-welder license brings new meaning to the term value added. Attaching each nickel took as many as five welds--a total of about 30,000 welds to fashion the coins into furniture. When asked what metal was most conducive to welding, Swing responded, "Now that's a trade secret."

Currency isn't as strong an end-market for nickel as it may appear. The U.S. Mint has adopted cupronickel alloys for most of its standard-issue coins to reduce costs and improve durability. According to figures provided by the mint, coins are composed of various base and precious metals.

A nickel is no longer just nickel. The 5-cent Jeffersons are actually 75-percent copper and only 25-percent nickel; dimes, quarters and half-dollars also are made of a cupronickel composite that contain only 8.33-percent nickel; and since 1981, pennies have been cast from 97.5-percent zinc and the balance copper.

The U.S. Mint makes about 2.3 billion nickels each year, or whatever supply the Federal Reserve deems necessary to keep up circulation, said a mint spokesman. So far this year, facilities in Denver and Philadelphia have turned out a total of 854.34 million nickels.

The mint buys metal strip about 13 inches wide and 1,500 feet long to manufacture nickels, dimes, quarters, half-dollars and dollars. Each coil is fed through a blanking press that punches out round discs called blanks. The leftover strip, or webbing, is chopped and recycled.

The Defense National Stockpile Center sources the majority of metal for coin fabrication. Precious metals are acquired domestically, but nickel is purchased on the open market because there are no nickel mining companies currently producing the metal in the United States.

As for legislation prohibiting taking currency out of circulation, Swing is confident that welding nickels in the name of art is not an act of defacing federal property. According to a mint spokesman, individuals can do what they like with money as long as they've earned it themselves and don't try to pass it off as currency after altering it. Besides, there is no shortage of 5-gram the Jefferson/Monticello coins--there are an estimated 16 billion in circulation.