Posted on 12/12/2012 7:00:26 AM PST by Renfield
Note the geopolitical underpinnings here, for the allegation is that the US central bank and its allies have been involved in massive gold fraud, while the major economy in Europe which coincidentally wants an audit and repatriation of some or all of its gold, and the major economy in Asia, are sending clear messages that they no longer completely trust the financial soundness of the West.
These are major blows, for as I have been trying to outline here and in those books, this system of finance is intimately tied to the post World War Two structure of western power; it is the financial mechanism underwriting Western military preponderance, and Germany, or at least, the Bundesbank, very much is a part of that structure and mechanism… for Germany now to call for audits and repatriation is a major fissure, one that could become a fault line, within that structure…. and it is the Germans themselves who are leading the drive for these calls, while their government continues, unresponsively, to try to remain integrated in that structure…
…the cracks are growing folks….
I'll have to look into alloys of W and Au.
We are well accustomed to exploit more innovative applications of tungsten products. Gold-plated tungsten is one of our main products. Pure tungsten, in the forms of round disc, plate, sheet, ring, and etc., can be perfectly coated with gold layer with clinquant shine, to replace gold or platinum merchandise except its currency function."
"http://www.chinatungsten.com/Tungsten-Alloy/Tungsten-for-Gold-plated-Application.html"
I suspect that Tungsten and Gold would not alloy well, because their melting points are so divergent. Maybe it could be done with crucible particle metallurgy.
Anything to get some gold back to replace the theft ?
Curiouser and curiouser
Ultrasonic is the best and least expensive method to check for the presence of W. The speeding of sound waves through W will only show half of the thickness of AU.
hmm, no I remember the same thing in the 80’s under Carter.
Shysters buy gold from the public at less than spot prices and then sell it for profit to bullion dealers. I wouldn’t be surprised of 30% or more of gold sold to the shysters is stolen in some form or another.
Common people buying guild pay a premium % of spot price. 3% or much more in when in the form of coins or Jewelry.
I would not be surprised to find that some gold storage houses have ripped people off, and most of them probably don’t even realize it.
There is a simple way to assay the gold — melt the bars. Tungsten has a much higher melting point than gold, so the two will separate in such an obvious way that a blind man could see it.
This seems more a “bash the USA” story rather than actual substance.
It seems more a propaganda “cyber” attack.
Put out a few labeled fakes, blame the USA etc. etc.
The only thing missing is a tinfoil hat.
Best way to check your gold bars would be to take them to an industrial shear machine and cut them in half and then eyeball them.
See #13.
Someone ran a binary element phase diagram in teh lst couple of decades, but it’s behind a paywall. The thumbnail shows a single phase with an increasing melting point towards tungstun. I don’t know if the study included physical properties as a function of composition.
Someone ran a binary element phase diagram in the last couple of decades, but it’s behind a paywall. The thumbnail shows a single phase with an increasing melting point towards tungsten. I don’t know if the study included physical properties as a function of composition.
Clearly, elastic flexing of the bars would be the easiest to detect statistically.
Just curious...
If you struck a gold bar vs a tungsten bar, would they “ring” differently? That might be an easy way to tell without a lot of sophisticated equipment, presuming gold bars share a common set of dimensions.
You are correct. Ultrasonic thickness gauges can easily find bars containing a high percentage of tungsten since the speed of sound in tungsten is nearly twice as fast as in gold. Ultrasonic gauges are calibrated for the speed of sound in the material - you must know the material for the gauge to work. If a gauge calibrated for gold looks at a gold plated tungsten bar, the measured bar thickness will be roughly half of the actual thickness. This method gets less accurate if only a small piece of tungsten is embedded in a larger piece of gold. But if the tungsten piece is small then the profit/loss from the fake is small also.
Alloying would be easy to spot, via the electrical conductivity of the ‘gold’ bar. I’m surprised that it is single-phase though.
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