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26 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. · Gold's chemica…
Yusuf Demir · 16 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
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. · Underkarated jewellery, not exotic tungsten-cored bars, is the fraud that costs the industry the most money overall, because it is quiet, distri…
Tomas Herrera · 16 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 · 19 min read
Industry · 20 August 2026
The Refiner's Ledger
…gold sits inside a given bar. The reference method remains fire assay, or cupellation, a technique with roots stretching back millennia: a sample of the metal is fused with lead and other reagents in a small clay cupel and heated in a furnace, the lead absorbing base metals and…
Tomas Herrera · 17 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 · 15 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 · 19 min read
Science · 9 August 2026
The Metallurgy of Karat
…eces. · A second strand of work targets hardness directly, borrowing dispersion-hardening techniques from aerospace alloys to produce 18-karat compositions that resist scratching far better than traditional recipes without sacrificing castability. A handful of specialist manufact…
Tomas Herrera · 17 min read
Markets · 18 August 2026
The Vault Beneath the City
…ther for decades can actually begin to bond at a microscopic level, requiring a practiced technique to separate them without scuffing the refiner’s stamp. The specialized trolleys used to move these pallets are engineered with low centres of gravity and reinforced axles, and the…
Ingrid Sørensen · 22 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 · 16 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 · 16 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 · 14 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 · 20 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 · 15 min read
Mining · 19 August 2026
Nine Grams a Tonne
What does it actually cost to pull an ounce of gold out of the ground? The honest answer runs through grade decline, energy and water bills, permitting delays and the closure liabilities nobody prices…
Amara Okonjo · 18 min read
Markets · 17 August 2026
Paper Gold: What You Own When You Do Not Own Bars
Most of the world's gold exposure is a contract, not a metal. Futures, unallocated accounts and exchange-traded funds each promise gold in a different way — and the differences only become visible whe…
Ingrid Sørensen · 23 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 · 18 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
Markets · 11 September 2026
The Last Audit: What We Actually Know About the World's Official Gold
Governments report holding roughly 36,000 tonnes of gold — a figure quoted everywhere and verified almost nowhere. Between the published number and the physical bar sits a chain of certificates, custo…
Ingrid Sørensen · 22 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 · 15 min read
Markets · 8 September 2026
The Real-Rate Trade: Why Gold Moves When Bond Yields Do
For two decades the gold price could be read off an inflation-linked bond screen. Then, somewhere after 2022, the relationship stopped behaving — and the argument about why has become the most consequ…
Ingrid Sørensen · 25 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 · 16 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 · 15 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 · 17 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 · 16 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 · 14 min read
