have a handful of questions

[bcouth]

hello,

thanks in advance for your time. i have a handful of questions, but i will start with one only.

i have become good enough at creating buttons with good piping (indicates purity, right?). the last three or four times that i have melted, i have made larger bars instead of smaller buttons. the bars don't have piping. does that mean that i am no longer making pure gold, or does larger amounts of gold behave differently? here is a picture of the bar i made tonight. does it look pure to you guys?

thanks, and
bcouth.

 

[rusty]

hello,

thanks in advance for your time. i have a handful of questions, but i will start with one only.

i have become good enough at creating buttons with good piping (indicates purity, right?). the last three or four times that i have melted, i have made larger bars instead of smaller buttons. the bars don't have piping. does that mean that i am no longer making pure gold, or does larger amounts of gold behave differently? here is a picture of the bar i made tonight. does it look pure to you guys?

thanks, and
bcouth.

Nothing wrong with your bar, looks great.

 

[jimdoc]

I think the rate it cools affects the piping effect.

Jim

 

[4metals]

I've cast bars with .9999 electrolytic gold and cooled them slowly with a torch applied during and after the pour and never produced a pipe. The same gold allowed to cool quickly will have a pronounced pipe.

 

[4nines]

if you pre heat your ingot that will also help.
looks good

 

[Dr. Poe]

The brownish spots indicate a very slight palladium contamination. Other than that I'd bet it's three 9's.
Dr. Poe

 

[bcouth]

The brownish spots indicate a very slight palladium contamination. Other than that I'd bet it's three 9's.
Dr. Poe

thanks, dr. poe.
i have noticed those brown (red?) spots in most of my bars and buttons. i imagined that it was some platinum group metal or another because i haven't yet had the time to learn how to process platinum group metals. for those of you in the know, does the presence of palladium in my bar inform you as to what type of material i started with?