OJAI : Craftsman to Create Coin to Mark City’s 70th Anniversary

Ojai will soon have a coin to commemorate 70 years as a city, thanks to tool-and-die master Carl McDougal.

The 71-year-old craftsman, who made a coin in 1971 to commemorate the city’s 50th anniversary, has made thousands of pins, badges and plaques, he said.

He has worked 50 years in the business, and since 1967, he has owned Pyramid Manufacturing Inc. at 317 Bryant St. in Ojai.

McDougal’s latest project, which will be ready in time for the Ojai Day Celebration on Oct. 12, was designed by his daughter Colleen.

It will have the Libbey Park Arcade and Spanish-style post office tower in downtown Ojai on one side, and Matilija poppies on the other, he said.

Carl McDougal will make the coin from a steel block called a die, but his mainstay, he said, is making the tools, which have needlelike points, used to etch the patterns required for such work.

The process begins with a sketch drawn in reverse and then hand-carved into a thin transparent plastic sheet.

“After 50 years, I don’t know whether I’m going or coming,” he said of the mirror drawing.

He transfers the pattern onto the steel die and adds details, he said.

“One little slip, and it’s ruined,” said Colleen McDougal, who owns a silk-screening and graphics business in Ojai.

After the design is etched onto the steel block, the piece is placed into a machine called a drop hammer, built in the 1820s.

Carl McDougal, who prefers the antique to modern hydraulic machines, then lowers a 150-pound weight, which sandwiches the unmarked metal between the two sides of the design, creating a coin.

After the coin is finished, the city can have copies made, he said.