The E-Sylum:  Volume 9, Number 30, July 23, 2006, Article 25

MORE ON GOLD TOKEN STRIKING

Dick Hanscom writes: "I would like to thank Dick Johnson for the
information he provided, but part of his reply was a little
off-subject as far as my gold problem goes.  My problem is that
when I melt the gold and pour into an ingot, and then try to roll
it to the thickness I need (.6mm), sometimes the gold is porous
or brittle, and cracks before I can put it through the rolling mill
more than a few times.  Even when rolling thinner just the tiniest
bit, it will flatten only a little before cracking.

The opinions I have received to this problem lean to impurities
in the raw gold. I am looking into how to solve this problem,
either by melting and using a flux to remove the impurities, or
adding a bit of copper to bind the gold.  If all this fails, the
gold will  be sold to a refiner and I will purchase more raw gold
and try again (I have purchased and melted enough raw gold to make
70+ 1 DWT tokens, so not all raw gold has this problem). Results
can be seen at:

ebaygold1.jpg
znativegold4.jpg
znativegold6.jpg

The dies for this token were cut by Charles Arceneaux.

As for softening after punching out the blanks and striking, I do
that.  The first batch of Nome gold rolled out with no problem to
.6mm so that I could punch out blanks.  I counterstamped an "N"
on the blanks before striking.  I struck one, and it was too hard.
Even just the small "N" counterstamp hardened the blanks. So I
softened the blanks again and the tokens struck just fine.

The information on hardening and softening steel was very interesting
and I guess I will have to look into this when I get further along.

I did find a site by Steve G. Adams on die engraving that gives
basic information: sga-sculpture-engraving.com  It does
not tell you "how to", but I have emailed and received some
information to get me started.

While I agree that I would not pull my own teeth, I also would not
do that for entertainment or the learning experience.  All I have
to lose is a little time and a little money. When my dies are
absolutely useless, I can still have some one cut two that will
meet my needs."

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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