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20 results for “granulation technique”
Craft · 5 June 2026
The Alchemy of Craft: What Goldsmiths Know That Machines Don't
…and colour. · Karat is a fraction out of 24 — 18k is 75 per cent gold by mass. · Ancient techniques such as granulation and repoussé remain hand skills with no full machine equivalent. · CAD and casting have displaced volume production, not the top of the trade. · What does 18k…
Yusuf Demir · 11 min read
Industry · 7 August 2026
How Fake Gold Is Detected
…ics usually allow. · Fire assay remains the legal reference method; every non-destructive technique is a proxy calibrated against it. · Does a magnet test prove gold is real? It disproves some fakes and proves nothing. Gold is diamagnetic, so it is not attracted to a magnet, but…
Tomas Herrera · 15 min read
Industry · 2 July 2026
Nine Nines: Inside a Modern Gold Refinery
…tage: fast chlorination to ~99.5%, then electrolysis to 99.99% and above. · Fire assay, a technique older than the periodic table, remains the referee method for purity. · Good Delivery accreditation governs which bars trade without re-assay in the wholesale market. · Provenance…
Tomas Herrera · 12 min read
History · 9 August 2026
The Hoard Problem: What Buried Gold Actually Tells Us
…lement profiles and lead isotope ratios can be compared with ore-body signatures, and the technique works best on objects made from a single, freshly refined source. Because ancient goldsmiths melted down whatever they had, most artefacts are alloys of several generations of meta…
Marguerite Adler · 16 min read
Craft · 22 July 2026
Hallmarks and Assay: How Anyone Proves Gold Is Gold
…ructive, slow and skilled, and it remains the reference method against which instrumental techniques are calibrated, because it measures the whole sample rather than inferring composition from a surface response. · Does no hallmark mean the piece is fake? Not necessarily. Compuls…
Yusuf Demir · 12 min read
Science · 8 August 2026
The Metal That Went Medical
…wine-red to slate blue in seconds. · The colour change is the instrument Most analytical techniques need a reader. Aggregation-based gold assays need an eye. If a biological binding event can be made to pull particles together or hold them apart, the result is a visible red-to-b…
Amara Okonjo · 15 min read
Industry · 28 July 2026
Urban Mining: The Richest Gold Ore on Earth Is in Your Old Phone
…the metal in acid mixtures in open containers, precipitate the gold, sell it locally. The technique is centuries old in outline. What is new is the feedstock, and the feedstock is full of brominated flame retardants, lead solder, mercury switches and beryllium. · The consequences…
Tomas Herrera · 13 min read
Industry · 7 August 2026
After the Cyanide
Every ounce of mined gold leaves behind roughly a tonne of processed rock and the water that carried it. What happens to that material after the last shift is the part of the industry with the longest…
Tomas Herrera · 17 min read
Markets · 20 June 2026
Bring It Home: Central Banks and the Great Gold Repatriation
For half a century it was rational to store your gold in someone else's basement. Then the calculus of counterparty risk changed, and reserve managers started chartering aircraft. · Overseas custody w…
Ingrid Sørensen · 13 min read
Mining · 5 August 2026
Grade, Cut-off and the Arithmetic of an Open Pit
A gold mine is not a hole with gold in it. It is a spreadsheet with a hole attached — and the single number that decides which rock is ore and which rock is waste moves every time the price does. · Mo…
Amara Okonjo · 16 min read
Markets · 8 August 2026
Moving Bullion: The Logistics Nobody Prices
Between the vault and the buyer sits an industry of armoured vehicles, sealed cargo, bonded warehouses and insurance clauses. It rarely makes news, and it is the reason a spot price in London can dive…
Ingrid Sørensen · 17 min read
Industry · 4 August 2026
The Gold Inside Your Phone
Industrial demand is the quietest third of the gold market: a few tenths of a gram per handset, multiplied by billions of devices, chosen not for prestige but because nothing else conducts as reliably…
Tomas Herrera · 15 min read
History · 14 July 2026
The Gold Standard: How a Soft Yellow Metal Became Money
For roughly five thousand years, humanity kept returning to the same element to settle its debts. The story is less about greed than about the unusually boring chemistry of atomic number 79. · Gold's…
Marguerite Adler · 14 min read
Science · 9 August 2026
The Metallurgy of Karat
Pure gold is too soft to hold a stone, too soft to hold an edge, and the wrong colour for half the world's taste. Almost everything you own that is gold is a designed alloy — and the design is where t…
Tomas Herrera · 16 min read
Mining · 22 May 2026
The Other Supply Chain: Artisanal Mining and the Mercury Problem
A significant share of the world's gold is produced by people working with hand tools, informal finance and a neurotoxin. Formalisation is the stated solution. Nobody agrees on what it costs. · Artisa…
Amara Okonjo · 12 min read
Industry · 6 August 2026
The Scrap Trade
Roughly a quarter of the world's annual gold supply has been gold before. It arrives as broken chains, single earrings and dental crowns, and it moves through a chain of intermediaries that most selle…
Ingrid Sørensen · 15 min read
Craft · 3 August 2026
The Wedding-Season Bid: How Jewellery Demand Sets the Floor
Half the world's gold is worn, not stored. In India and China that distinction barely exists — and the buying behaviour it produces is the most reliably contrarian force in the entire market. · Jewell…
Yusuf Demir · 16 min read
Science · 10 August 2026
Where Gold Actually Comes From
Every gram of gold on Earth was manufactured in an astrophysical catastrophe, arrived here after the planet had already formed, and was then concentrated by hot water. Three separate accidents, none o…
Tomas Herrera · 18 min read
Markets · 2 August 2026
Who Actually Sets the Gold Price
There is no single gold price. There is a London settlement number, a New York futures curve, a Shanghai premium and a jeweller's counter in Dubai — and the distance between them is where the market l…
Ingrid Sørensen · 15 min read
Markets · 6 August 2026
Why Central Banks Started Buying Gold Again
For three decades official institutions were net sellers of bullion, and the policy consensus treated the metal as a museum piece. Then, quietly, the world's reserve managers reversed. The reasons are…
Ingrid Sørensen · 17 min read
