The E-Sylum:  Volume 9, Number 28, July 9, 2006, Article 18

METALLURGICAL AND ENGRAVING INFORMATION SOUGHT

Dick Hanscom of Alaska Rare Coins writes: "For a year or so, I
have been using raw Alaska gold to make gold tokens. I have had
no problems until recently. Perhaps one of your readers with
metallurgical background can help.

Two recent batches of gold (one from the beaches at Nome and one
from the 40 Mile district) when melted and poured into an ingot
will not roll out in my rolling mill. They are brittle and porous.
As I put them through the mill, they crack, or actually split and
comes out of the mill in a "V" (actually quite cool, but useless).
Both of these sources have a fineness in the high .870s to .900.

I am doing nothing different than with previous gold samples. In
fact, the first batch of Nome gold, from the same miner rolled out
fine, down to .6mm with no problem.  Let me add that local jewelers
will not work with raw gold because of this problem, but cannot
explain why it happens.  Also, I have made over 70 - 1 DWT tokens
in this manner before coming upon this problem.

My second question is this:  Does anyone know of a website that
might have some basic information on engraving dies?  My tokens
are crude enough so that I think even I could engrave a die, with
no artistic talent, if had had some basic info on where to start.
My email address is akcoins@mosquitonet.com"

  Wayne Homren, Editor

	coinbooks.org Web

The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization 
promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org.

To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor 
at this address: whomren@coinlibrary.com

To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum