2square

Sorry, yeah, I was googling half asleep at 2am and I don't know what the xxxx i did to miss this. There's lots of them. Thank you for all your help. I made a donation to this forum website.

I'm having trouble finding a gold-iron phase diagram. Does anybody have one? Thanks in advance.

Frosty nailed it: what's needed here is just enough realism to allow suspension of disbelief. If the technical aspect of the premise can somehow pass muster with you guys, it will definitely be ok with the general public. I really like GNM's idea about sabotage. I can work with that. Here's some more info that might help: -The foundry is located in occupied Belgrade, Yugoslavia. No V1 rockets or German advanced steel tech there. This is a more primitive operation. -The objective of melting the original bullion ingots is to destroy the hallmarks and recast the gold into a different number of them and with different shape. Can't say much more, but as you've probably guessed we're dealing with Nazi gold. Need to solve these four fundamental problems: 1. What kind of furnace we might be dealing with, given the place and 1944. 2. What kind of compound or metal was added to the furnace after the ingots were thrown in (if sabotage), or what was already inside (if accident). 3. What proportion of added compound relative to Au would be needed to produce the desired 21k outcome. In my first iteration I thought 10% Fe was good enough. And as George said- 'To be realistic you would have to figure out how much molten iron (2800 degrees F) it would take to melt X amount of gold (melting point 1980 degrees F)'. But as I mentioned, the contaminant doesn't necessarily have to be iron/steel. You can pick whatever you think might work best. 4. What would be the temperature in the furnace needed to melt the Au and mix well enough with the compound of your choice? Thank you for brainstorming with me and for hanging in there.

Huge thanks George NM for calling out some of the biggest godawful flaws in my hare brain scheme. Having an expert finding faults in the story premise is not only super valuable -it's the only way forward to get to a workable plot that I can use. And also thanks to Frosty. I got a got a kick out of your plot -you have a very active imagination. Please understand that the idea is not set in stone. The process to obtain the contaminated cast ingots doesn't have to go down the way I wrote. I was just throwing it out there, see if it sticks. It's fiction after all, so anything can happen, right? The thing is I cannot go off the rails too hard. I still have to make this bit somewhat believable, or I won't be able to use it at all. I can certainly make it improbable, but not impossible. So back to the drawing board. I have to work with the following constraints in the story: -It happens in Europe in 1944. So no modern furnace tech will do. -Whatever the process, it somehow has to start with 24 karat bullion bars and end up with the production of cast gold ingots with purity degraded to around 21 karats. The compound doesn't have to be 10% Fe, 90% Au (the steel mix was just an idea). But the new ingots must contain a distinct (preferably unusual) combination of impurities that act as a sort of unique fingerprint. This is something that will help identify the provenance of the gold later in the story. -The contamination in the re-smelting process of the original 24k gold ingots cannot be a willful act. It must be the consequence of an unintended action at the foundry. Something like a mistake, sabotage, or some kind of oversight or accident (you can leave these details to me, Frosty). On the other hand, I'm free to end up with whatever product you might think possible -a homogeneous alloy or some very different compound (a two-phase material?) -anything, just as long as the ingots can be later reheated to extract/refine the gold. Perhaps my original idea can be improved? Or maybe it's just so bad it cannot be salvaged. Maybe got to find a completely different way to get to the intended result. Unfortunately, I don't know a thing about furnaces, or metallurgy or alloys. I really appreciate your creativity. So if you can cook up a better idea of how to end up with the contaminated ingots, please tell.

Thank you so much Ferritic for your informative reply. To clarify, let's say the process went something like this- A small blast furnace running at somewhere between 1500-1700 C contains some leftover Fe and C from a batch of ore that was being used to make steel. Solid gold is dropped in, resulting in a (approximately 10% Fe, 90% Au) mixture at the bottom. The gold fully melts and mixes. Then the mix is poured directly into casting molds without quenching. The material in the molds is then allowed to reach equilibrium through gradual cooling. If I understand your comments correctly, this would mean the process described above would likely produce a two-phase material, but not a truly homogeneous alloy, and there would be no coring. Does this conclusion seem reasonable? And if you were to heat up the material again, as you mentioned, it would then be possible to extract the Au from the Fe and C and other impurities. Correct?

Thank you Frosty and Irondragon for the replies. I'm not even close to knowing anything about metallurgy. I am a writer working on a script for a BreakingBad-style of story and I could use some expert advice to help me square a circle in the story plot. In the plot, stolen bullion is accidentally dropped into a large crucible which is being used to make steel. Since the temperature would be pretty high (melting iron) I would think the gold would melt fast and I was wondering if this would create a homogeneous alloy or just layered patterns as Frosty mentioned.

Hi everyone, I was wondering if somebody might be so kind to help me by answering this question- Is it technically or theoretically possible to create an alloy consisting of 90% pure (24k) gold and 10% steel? If it were forged in the right conditions, could this combination result in a true alloy? Or would the mixture end up as a non-homogeneous compound no matter what? Many thanks for your help. -George