Challenge Coin Flag

United States Challenge Coin Holder

I was asked to make a challenge coin holder for a neighbor.  I accepted because I like challenges, and this was a way of saying thank you to someone that has served in the armed forces.  I am grateful that I did know what challenge coins were.  It was my first time actually seeing some.  I thought they were always round and about the same size.  They are cool looking.

The design process was not easy.  The US flag does not make it easy to make a symmetrical holder, so it is not.  Thirteen stripes does not divide well.  I was struggling whether to have all the holder on the white part or to have the last holder on the red stripe making the bottom section three stripes tall instead of two.  I decided to put the lowest ledge on the red strip for any of the larger coins.  The next design point was the size.  The customer gave a general dimension of 24x36”.  Thank goodness for the internet because there is a flag calculator there.  I played with the stripe dimension and came up with 1 ½” stripe width.  This gave me 19 ½” x 37”.  Part of me wanted to make this as close to a regulation flag as possible.

The big lesson learned in this project is that you cannot bend bow and cup out of a board no matter the size and number of clamps.  I had maple piece that had about 3/16” of bow along the glue edge.  This was a 1 1/8” wide strip going into a large pane.  I thought that I could clamp and glue it out.  Each piece that I glued to it took the bow of the maple piece.  I finally got it out with five strips, but it broke with in twelve hours of removing the clamps.  I had to remake the lower section of the flag for one piece that I knew was a problem from the beginning. 

I liked how it turned out and the customer is happy.