Writer needs help with gold and slag(?)

Hi.

First, big thanks in advance!! Hopefully you find this a fun/interesting thought experiment.

QUESTION: Can a person in 1863 smelt/refine placer gold (and melt gold coins) and then hide it inside something else (I'm thinking slag, but I have no idea if that's even the correct term)?

WHY I'M ASKING: I've started a Western series based in Colorado. I've published the first book in the series but I won't point you to it as I'm not here to sell (mentioned just so you know I'm serious).

Been googling and searching the forum but without luck as I don't know enough (anything) about the process to know what I'm looking at

Here's the backstory:

In 1863, the Clark, Gruber & Co. mint in Denver was bought out by the Federal government (true). A local gangster gets the idea to steal some of the mint's coin hoard and gold dust when they move locations (they did move locations but the theft is fiction). The gangster hires a seasoned smelter/refiner to convert the gold into bars/ingots. This person decides to take an extra cut by hiding gold inside SOMETHING so that anyone looking at it has no idea there's gold in it. My initial thought, but I don't know if this is even possible, is to hide buttons of gold inside melted black sand (is that slag?). Maybe the end product just looks like black glass beads. Of course, I don't know if melted sand would be so hot it would melt the gold--but maybe that's okay as long as the finished product looks nothing like gold. The man then passes it off as waste material from the smelting/refining process.

So is this possible or is there a better way to hide gold in plain sight from his gangster boss?

Thanks!!

Joseph

Well, a nobel prize was hidden from the nazi's by simply dissolving in aqua regia.

But, to answer your questions
Black sand is not the same as slag

Yes, some gold could be hidden in slag as small prills, but they would be visible to some extent, and if he was wanting to hide a LOT of gold, he would probably be better off going another route. By dissolving the gold, only precipitating some of it, then cementing the rest on copper, so it looks like worthless black sludge.

They use tin to drop it out as black colloidal gold. Lacquer (or otherwise fuse) it together in to lumps. Hide it in the coal car of the train and voilà. Looks like coal.
You could toss in a good side story on the how they got the tin from old cans or something.

Thanks for the replies!

With either method, could the result be melted and poured into a mold?

What I want to ultimately happen is that the smelter/refiner turns it into something "decorative" that he hides in his house.

After he completes the refining for the gangster, the gangster kills him. I need the gold to be hidden in plain site inside the smelter/refiner's house. So it needs to be something his wife wouldn't throw away (or in the case of the coal, burn for fuel--though that could probably work). Initial thought is he turns it into decorative objects like "toys" for his two children and privets for the wife. After he's killed, his children play with these things and pass them down to their children, never knowing they've been playing with quite a bit of gold this whole time.

Oh. I'm sure they would realise that their golden toys are exponentially heavier than their tin toys or others. :lol:

The black sludge from celebration could easily be melted and would return to its familiar yellow colour. But, if it is to be melted, and hidden in plain sight, it would need to be allowed with another metal so it wouldn't be yellow.
Aluminum and gold will be purple.
Silver and gold is green
Copper, red
Iron and gold alloyed is a blueish grey (i believe)
Gold and silicon has a unique color too.
Gold can alloy with many many many different metals, giving it a wide variety of colors.

For 1863, I would think in terms of lead toys. It was very popular in that time era to make toys soldiers from lead. You could then paint them to be which ever military you wanted. Weight would be even closer to gold than tin, and painting them would often be expected, so would be an excuse to cover the gold color.

Excellent point Shark.
The era of the story slipped my mind. Lead or pot metal toys would be close for sure.

I dont know how practical it would be, as I think molten lead(even at 700 degrees) may be enough to get solid gold to a liquidus state.(at least on the exterior to some minimal extent)
But, if not, you could have the gold center of the toy, and that could be dipped in molten lead, then painted. So if the clever gangster scraped some paint, the lead would show.

Maybe the gangsters would take the "lead" toys for their gangster kids.

jimdoc said:

Maybe the gangsters would take the "lead" toys for their gangster kids.

Click to expand...

Or take them to make lead slugs, then be really surprised when they get to the shiny yellow core. :twisted:

I like the idea of lead for the weight. And especially if it would be as easy as dipping the gold into lead. According to The Google, gold's melting point is 1,948°F ... so I would think dipping it in 700° lead would work. It'll be like making chocolate-covered caramels

And maybe he does paint them for added camouflage. Or gets the kids to paint them.

I was trying to think up what kind of toy-like design (that would be relatively easy) and just realized they could simply be cubes ... a set of "blocks" for the kids to stack and build things with.

Thanks for the brainstorming!!

Oh, and to jimdoc's suggestion ... a moment of tension could be where the gangster does take some of the blocks.

The best way to do it in plain sight would be as you suggested by holding up some of the pure metal in the slags. Melting is a normal operation in the refining and minting process so by using a technique that is expected and just altering the flux blend, the savvy refiner could do the deed in plain sight and the unknowing gangster would be totally unaware. And the recovery later isn't all that difficult. And the recovered gold can be cast into any shape, like weights for a grandfather clock, they're quite heavy and if pure gold would be a small fortune.

Funny thing is you are writing this for a western that played out 150 years ago but this still goes on today!

What is the name of the name of the first of the series you published?

Thanks, 4Metals. The first book is "Hench" ... which is the hero's name. Takes place in a fictionalized La Junta, Colorado (and has nothing to do with gold

I'm trying to decide how much gold the gangster and refiner steal from Clark, Gruber & Co. The company purchased 77,000 troy ounces of raw gold over the years (which just happens to be 5280 pounds ... and being from Denver, 5280 is a "magic" number because 5280 feet is one mile, as in the mile-high city, even before all the pot).

Anyway. They also shipped "large amounts of dust" to the Philly Mint. So there could be quite a lot of gold in both raw form and coinage "sitting" around during the company's move. Hmmm.