# 31.1 g Pt Bar



## lazersteve (Dec 14, 2012)

I'm very proud of this 1 troy ounce Pt bar I fabricated today, so I figured I would share it with the forum. I think it's my best Pt bar yet. I started with four refined Pt BB's and fused them together, top and bottom, with the oxy-hydrogen torch in the general shape of the bar until the Pt was free flowing. Next, I flattened the bar between two sheets of high purity Titanium on shaped it into a clean rectangle on the anvil with a 3# sledge. I finished up with a fire polish under the oxy-hydrogen flame to bring out the shine. It's not perfect, but it's very beautiful in my opinion.







I made this one for a customer by request and sold it to him.

Steve


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## Anonymous (Dec 14, 2012)

That looks beautiful. What did you use to get that amount of Pt?

Kevin


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## lazersteve (Dec 14, 2012)

Jet engine turbine blades.

Steve


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## tek4g63 (Dec 14, 2012)

lazersteve said:


> Jet engine turbine blades.
> 
> Steve




The pros get all the coolest things to play with.

It looks pretty awesome! 

I don't know much about Pt, but it sounds like its a bit more tricky to work with than gold is. Would love to have one of those one day to show off myself.


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## AndyWilliams (Dec 14, 2012)

Is that what the Terminator in Terminator 2 was made out of? It does look cool!


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## Anonymous (Dec 14, 2012)

AndyWilliams said:


> Is that what the Terminator in Terminator 2 was made out of? It does look cool!


I think the "T-100 or the T-1000" Terminators were made out of a Titanium/alloy metal. The ones that shape-shifted were made out of something more advanced. Probably a combination of mercury and other alloys.

Kevin


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## goldenchild (Dec 15, 2012)

testerman said:


> AndyWilliams said:
> 
> 
> > Is that what the Terminator in Terminator 2 was made out of? It does look cool!
> ...



The T-1000s actually _were_ the shape shifters. The older model(Arnold) were the T-800 and T-850. They were made of a "hyperalloy". The T-1000s were made of "mimetic" pollyalloy. Don't know if they ever said what these alloys were exactly. 

From T2

JOHN
So this other guy? He's a terminator too,
right, like you?

TERMINATOR
Not like me. A T-1000. Advanced prototype.
A mimetic polyalloy.

JOHN
What does that mean?

TERMINATOR
Liquid metal.

I'm guessing either one of these alloys could be more valuable than Pt :lol:


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## g_axelsson (Dec 15, 2012)

At least we know we could use molten iron as a collector. :mrgreen:

Sorry, Lazersteve, that is a really beautiful bar. As soon as I'm done with my first gold bar (almost got 20 grams now) I'm going for palladium and then some day maybe even platinum. I'm trying to catch up, not so easy. 

/Göran


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## NobleMetalWorks (Dec 15, 2012)

Steve,

That is a beautiful bar, nice casting! 

Scott


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## lazersteve (Dec 15, 2012)

Forming platinum is no easy task, not because of it's hardness (it's very soft), but because of it's high melting point. It's very hard to keep Pt molten. Under a torch flame, the platinum is only molten while the flame is directly on the surface of the Pt, and the Pt is only molten in a very small area around the point where the flame hits the Pt. This is the reason the bar had to be formed using repeated melting shaping processes. Forming a bar by hand like this one takes a lot of time and patience. I have about two hours in the one in the photo. After you get the general shape you want, then you have to make it as regular as possible by rolling and/or hammering. Then you return to the torch and try to smooth out any defects induced by the mill/hammer. 

When working with high purity Pt and a rolling mill or hammer, I only allow the refined Pt to be touched by chemically pure titanium. I use two thin sheets of Ti to protect the pure Pt from the mill rolls, hammer head, and anvil face. It's quite difficult to hold the bar in the desired angles between two sheets of Ti while smacking it with the sledge to obtain the desired shape. 

When you are happy with the shape then you have to carefully polish the top and bottom on a smooth high temperature surface that is level. I use a 4" x 4" x 1/4" specialty ceramic slab for this. It's the oxy/hydrogen gas fire polishing that gives the bar it's brilliant shine as the formed bar comes out of the shaping process smooth with a dull gray color. 

I suppose there are centrifugal machines for casting perfectly formed Platinum bars, but I don't have one of those, and where's the fun in that?

Steve


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## element47.5 (Dec 15, 2012)

Yet another oddity (your description of the difficulties in working Pt) in the overall scheme of things where Pt is cheaper than gold, when it is a lot rarer, and harder to work, than gold. Talking about apples and apples, a 1 oz Pt Maple is about $100 less than a Gold Maple (the spreads are wider on Pt because they are transacted less often) 

I have noticed that the spread between Pt and Gold is coming much closer to $100. It was $150 for a fair while. And it is considered historically unusual for Pt to be spot-priced below gold though it has been so for "a while". 

A lot of funds have been buying into Pt and Pd lately and you can see it in the charts. Pd, in particular, is up 5+% from a month/45 days or so ago....closer to $700 than $650-660. I personally believe they are trying to frontrun inflation expectations post "fiscal cliff" fix, if any, and, wanting a place to store cash in the interim. But what I believe or not is just an opinion, you can see the ramps in these metals of late on a chart is my only point. Pd most of all.


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## lazersteve (Dec 15, 2012)

Platinum coins such as maples are most certainly formed by punching disks out of a rolled sheet of platinum, then embossed via a press. The difficulties I described above are only relative to bars formed by hand as I commonly do. I have no idea how the 'workability' of Pt verse that of Au comes into play with the market price of these metals. 

Steve


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## nickvc (Dec 16, 2012)

Beautiful bar Steve. Working pure platinum is very easy as you know because it's soft like fine gold, when it's alloyed especially into jewellery it becomes very difficult to work, modern alloys use cobalt and old ones used iridium, and its not easy to achieve a good finish. When casting platinum or palladium into jewellery they use special induction melters to achieve the heat needed to allow the metal to flow into the cans and fill the voids left by the burnt out waxes. Hand melting any platinum is not easy to say the least and what you have achieved is excellent and I doubt anyone could do any better without very expensive equipment.


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## joem (Dec 16, 2012)

Great job steve. I don't know much about platinum in planes but how much acid did you use to dissolve the rest of the plane? LOL


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## lazersteve (Dec 16, 2012)

joem said:


> Great job Steve. I don't know much about platinum in planes but how much acid did you use to dissolve the rest of the plane? LOL



I removed the Platinum, then returned the aerospace alloy less the Pt  !

Steve


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