From Popular Science' Do-it-Yourself column:
Cast your own bogus bullion.
Real Or Fake?
Lead bars coated in imitation gold leaf [top left, top right]
seem like knockoffs next to real bullion
[cylindrical, flat bars] and a
fake covered in genuine gold leaf [center].
Mike Walker
Last September, a New York City gold dealer spent $72,000 on his worst nightmare: fake gold bars. The four 10-ounce counterfeits came with all the features of authentic ingots, including serial numbers. That’s pretty scary when you consider how many people own gold—or think they do.
I’ve been a fake-gold fan ever since author Damien Lewis wrote me into his 2007 spy thriller, Cobra Gold. My supposed experience making fake gold was pure fiction, yet I’m still treated as a source on the matter. I decided it’s time to call my own bluff and make some real bogus bullion.
Instead of a 10-ounce ingot, I cast a two-kilogram (4.4-pound) fake the size of a Twinkie cake. A Twinkie heavier than four pounds? Yes, gold is dense, much denser even than lead. Good forgeries must have the right weight, and there is only one element as dense as gold that’s neither radioactive nor expensive. That’s tungsten, which can cost less than $50 a pound.
Pouring Alloy: Molten lead-antimony alloy is poured around a tungsten core inside a graphite mold.
Mike Walker
To fabricate a convincing fake, crooks could pour molten gold around a tungsten core. The bar would have a near-perfect weight, and drilling shallow holes would reveal nothing but real gold. A two-kilogram bar made this way would cost about $15,000 and be “worth” about $110,000. Since I have to work within PopSci’s modest budget, and I’m not a criminal, I settled for a fake costing about $200 in materials....MORE
