This time I'm sharing my small adventure learning how to make big money.
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I'm such a tourist. I've developed certain habits of looking for fun local things to do when I'm on work trips. I guess the habit has followed me home. It turns out I can find crazy new things to do right in my own back yard.
Not only does Fort Worth host The Bureau of Engraving and Printing, (Cue Pink Floyd's "Money") but they offer free tours to the public! How cool is that? From their website: "The tour features the various steps of currency production, beginning with large, blank sheets of paper, and ending with wallet-ready bills!" To think...all of our paper bills are made in only two locations: Washington, D.C., and Fort Worth, TX. Their website said a cat-walk high above the printing presses allows you to view the process.
I'm in. Truth be told, I've never met a factory tour I didn't like. I love seeing a giant beater mixing vats of salad dressing, conveyor belts sending bottles toward spigots that will fill them with club soda or shampoo, and machines that drop down and twist lids onto the bottles.
The box-making machines are my very favorite. One piece of a machine lifts flat pieces of cardboard, another swings out and, fwaak!, folds in one flap, then knocks in the one on the other side. Another gadget juts out to turn the box upright. Then the moisturizer, ink cartridge, or pieces of chocolate drop into the box. Two arms then spring out to fold the lid in two places and insert the final flap in place.
Voila! a boxed product - untouched by human hands. Amazing!
I like seeing massive vats of milk getting pasteurized, sneakers being cut out of nylon, or almonds being sorted and roasted. And, I guess it's no secret that one of my fondest dreams in life is to go to The Source: the factories where all of those loud, ugly, carpets are birthed.
Factories are fascinating.
So, I figured, what could be more interesting than seeing cold, hard, cash rushing off the presses? Answer: not much.
It really is a factory. They refer to their "product". Their customer is the Federal Reserve and they emphasize that their product is not money until it's monetized by the Fed's.
Ultimately, it is one big print shop. It's like Kinko's on some mega (mega) doses of steroids. Each step of the process is incredibly precise and designed to make it very difficult to replicate.
They use a special ink that has to turn out the exact same shade of green every single time. (The Bureau uses 19 tons of ink per day.) The paper is 75% cotton and 25% linen. It arrives with watermarks in it as the first of many precautions to make it difficult to reproduce. The paper is made by Crane and Co...the same folks that make those really nice thank you cards. Who knew? It also arrives with plastic threads in it that glow when held up to UV light; different colors depending on the denomination. the paper also has blue and red threads woven into it.
The plates are created through an incredibly exacting process. The engravers are artists and go through countless painstaking and time consuming steps to create the images on our bills. The plates are recreated through an elaborate electroplating process. They have to make plates for everything; not just the obvious images of the presidents and the buildings. There are dozens of background images, shields, and signatures. Each plate must be perfect. The margin of error in creating these is roughly 1/10th the thickness of a human hair.
They use multiple methods and machines for printing different parts of the notes. They have started adding color to the twenties. A lot of the tour is focused on explaining engraving, offset, and intaglio printing methods. Then they show all of the ways they test to make sure bills come out identical.
It's a rush to see all of those sheets of bills coming out of the machines. The workers handled it like pizza dough. They'd take these heavy piles and fold them back and forth, flop them over, and perform hundreds of checks along the path to pockets.
The sheets get cut, stacked, then shrink wrapped into "bricks" containing 4000 notes. Four bricks are strapped together and are known as "cash packs", then put on pallets. Depending on the denomination the pallet can be worth as much as $64 million.
Even more interesting than the piles of money, were two interesting departments managed by the B.E.P. (Well, since, they weren't my piles of money.) The test department runs the bills through washing machines, applies chemicals, and even puts it through extensive "crumple testing". It must be able to withstand at least 8 "crumples" without losing it's color, or tearing. They have a gnarly crumpling machine for this test. (Factoid: A bill can be folded back and forth across the same crease 4000 times without tearing.)
The Damaged Currency department is even more interesting. It reimburses you for cash you have that is so damaged you can't use it...or even determine how much it is. ex. The stash of cash you found behind grannie's furnace. Years of heat have melded it into a hard brick. Turns out it's a really bad idea to leave money just sitting around. Too dry and it becomes so brittle it disintegrates when touched. To moist and it will mold beyond recognition. People in this department painstakingly identify the denominations, and number of bills from piles of burnt, petrified, or otherwise mutilated money. They will reimburse you for as much as they can identify. Once a cow ate a farmer's wallet. He sent the entire stomach of the cow in to this department. They carefully sifted through the remains and sent him a check back for $600.00.
A woman interviewed from this department said to be sure and go through elderly people's belongings very carefully. Check paint cans, and books, and behind drawers. They have found money in some strange places.
More than half of the bills in the country are created in this facility in my own back yard and I'd only heard the briefest mentions of it. Every bill made here has "FW" printed on it. I did a quick check and found that 7 out of 9 bills in my wallet had the "FW" on them.
My only disappointment from the day was that, unlike most tours, they did not give samples out at the end.
Not only does Fort Worth host The Bureau of Engraving and Printing, (Cue Pink Floyd's "Money") but they offer free tours to the public! How cool is that? From their website: "The tour features the various steps of currency production, beginning with large, blank sheets of paper, and ending with wallet-ready bills!" To think...all of our paper bills are made in only two locations: Washington, D.C., and Fort Worth, TX. Their website said a cat-walk high above the printing presses allows you to view the process.
I'm in. Truth be told, I've never met a factory tour I didn't like. I love seeing a giant beater mixing vats of salad dressing, conveyor belts sending bottles toward spigots that will fill them with club soda or shampoo, and machines that drop down and twist lids onto the bottles.
The box-making machines are my very favorite. One piece of a machine lifts flat pieces of cardboard, another swings out and, fwaak!, folds in one flap, then knocks in the one on the other side. Another gadget juts out to turn the box upright. Then the moisturizer, ink cartridge, or pieces of chocolate drop into the box. Two arms then spring out to fold the lid in two places and insert the final flap in place.
Voila! a boxed product - untouched by human hands. Amazing!
I like seeing massive vats of milk getting pasteurized, sneakers being cut out of nylon, or almonds being sorted and roasted. And, I guess it's no secret that one of my fondest dreams in life is to go to The Source: the factories where all of those loud, ugly, carpets are birthed.
Factories are fascinating.
So, I figured, what could be more interesting than seeing cold, hard, cash rushing off the presses? Answer: not much.
It really is a factory. They refer to their "product". Their customer is the Federal Reserve and they emphasize that their product is not money until it's monetized by the Fed's.
Ultimately, it is one big print shop. It's like Kinko's on some mega (mega) doses of steroids. Each step of the process is incredibly precise and designed to make it very difficult to replicate.
They use a special ink that has to turn out the exact same shade of green every single time. (The Bureau uses 19 tons of ink per day.) The paper is 75% cotton and 25% linen. It arrives with watermarks in it as the first of many precautions to make it difficult to reproduce. The paper is made by Crane and Co...the same folks that make those really nice thank you cards. Who knew? It also arrives with plastic threads in it that glow when held up to UV light; different colors depending on the denomination. the paper also has blue and red threads woven into it.
The plates are created through an incredibly exacting process. The engravers are artists and go through countless painstaking and time consuming steps to create the images on our bills. The plates are recreated through an elaborate electroplating process. They have to make plates for everything; not just the obvious images of the presidents and the buildings. There are dozens of background images, shields, and signatures. Each plate must be perfect. The margin of error in creating these is roughly 1/10th the thickness of a human hair.
They use multiple methods and machines for printing different parts of the notes. They have started adding color to the twenties. A lot of the tour is focused on explaining engraving, offset, and intaglio printing methods. Then they show all of the ways they test to make sure bills come out identical.
It's a rush to see all of those sheets of bills coming out of the machines. The workers handled it like pizza dough. They'd take these heavy piles and fold them back and forth, flop them over, and perform hundreds of checks along the path to pockets.
The sheets get cut, stacked, then shrink wrapped into "bricks" containing 4000 notes. Four bricks are strapped together and are known as "cash packs", then put on pallets. Depending on the denomination the pallet can be worth as much as $64 million.
Even more interesting than the piles of money, were two interesting departments managed by the B.E.P. (Well, since, they weren't my piles of money.) The test department runs the bills through washing machines, applies chemicals, and even puts it through extensive "crumple testing". It must be able to withstand at least 8 "crumples" without losing it's color, or tearing. They have a gnarly crumpling machine for this test. (Factoid: A bill can be folded back and forth across the same crease 4000 times without tearing.)
The Damaged Currency department is even more interesting. It reimburses you for cash you have that is so damaged you can't use it...or even determine how much it is. ex. The stash of cash you found behind grannie's furnace. Years of heat have melded it into a hard brick. Turns out it's a really bad idea to leave money just sitting around. Too dry and it becomes so brittle it disintegrates when touched. To moist and it will mold beyond recognition. People in this department painstakingly identify the denominations, and number of bills from piles of burnt, petrified, or otherwise mutilated money. They will reimburse you for as much as they can identify. Once a cow ate a farmer's wallet. He sent the entire stomach of the cow in to this department. They carefully sifted through the remains and sent him a check back for $600.00.
A woman interviewed from this department said to be sure and go through elderly people's belongings very carefully. Check paint cans, and books, and behind drawers. They have found money in some strange places.
More than half of the bills in the country are created in this facility in my own back yard and I'd only heard the briefest mentions of it. Every bill made here has "FW" printed on it. I did a quick check and found that 7 out of 9 bills in my wallet had the "FW" on them.
My only disappointment from the day was that, unlike most tours, they did not give samples out at the end.
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