The daily Alaskan., 1917-01-18
CUR GOLD PIECES
They Once Figured In an Odd
 Way In the JeWeIry Trade.
WENT INTO THE MELTING POT.

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 perinaH the Coins With Iridium.
 An old time manufacturing jeweler tells how the United States govern ment stopped some forty odd years ago the melting up of twenty dollar gold pieces by persons who wished to use the metal in the manufacture of gold jewelry.
 In those days 1t was the custom of many of the jewelry makers to use these coins instead of buying fine gold, as a matter of convenience. So they went to bank and got twenty dollar goldpieces enough, or ten dollar ones, for that matter, to supply sufficient metal for the work in hand. The gold pieces being % carats fine, 24 carats being absolutely pure gold, 1t was not diff cult for the jewellers to melt them up and add the necessary alloys to pro duce the degree of fnenesS desired for the jewelry they were going to make.
 However" says the jeweler, 1t was not long after this practice be- came more or less general that the government authorities began to won- der what was becoming of the twenty dollar gold coins. They began missing the ten dollar ones, too, but the dis appearance of the former was by far the more rapid. The officials did not think that the people of the country were hoarding the gold, because most of the smaller coins remained in cir culation. So a quiet investigation was begun, and 1t was not long before 1t was discovered that the makers or gold jewelry were melting them up for trade purposes.
 Having found the cause, 1t was not difficult for the officials to efect cure They did 1t by 'peppering' the twenty dollar coins with iridium, which is not altogether unlike black emery tn the crude state, requiring a heat Of 3,542 degrees P. to melt 1t. Gold, on the other hand, can be melted at 1913 degrees F. From this 1t is easy to see that the unsuspecting manufacturer, melting up gold pieces at the temper ature required, got a number of un- melted specks of iridium in his metal when he let 1t cool This made trouble when the metal was worked up.
 At the time this was being done there was a great vogue for fine Etrus- can work in solid gold, which required a perfectly smooth surface in order to be produced properly. Imagine the dis may of the jewellers, therefore, when they found the much needed smooth surface dotted here and there with It. tie pepper-like specks of iridium. TO leave them in meant that the decora- tive work could not be done properly and to take them out meant leaving the piece pockmarked with tiny holes. It was not long before the gold pieces. whether they contained iridium or not, were eyed with suspicion by the man. ufacturers, who then secured their metal from other sources.
 Another way in which iridium caus- ed some trouble for the gold jewelry trade had its birth in the assay office. While 1t was not often the case, 1t was not a rare thing up until about ten years ago to find sprinkling of iri- dium in the fine gold purchased from the government assayer. While this might possibly have been avoided by little more care on the part of the per sons who had charge of preparing the scrap metal for refining, 1t was gener- ally regarded in the trade as acciden- tai. It happened because the clips and filings that were turned in for refining by the makers of gold pens contained tiny bits of iridium, which because of it's hardness Is used for tipping the pens. This does not happen any more.
 "Twenty dollar gold pieces figured in another interesting way in the old days in the jewelry trade, but in a way that affected the trade much more indirect ly than directly. Knowing that good price could be had for scrap gold from the refners, the gold probably finding an ultimate purchaser in the jewelry trade, interruptions persons had sey- eral ways of obtaining this scrap and still leaving enough of the coins to pass them on msuspecting tradesmen and banks that were not careful enough to weigh them when they were rendered.
 "One way of doing this was to strip a coin by putting 1t into an electro chemical bath, getting thereby slight residue of gold on a copper plate, which was afterward melted and the metals separated. This method was not very popular, as 1t had q tendency to dis color the coin.
 "One of the most successful schemes was the. use of a specially prepared male and female die. The diameter of l the die was about one one-thousandth of an inch smaller than the diameter | of the coin, and it was so made that after the resultant rim of metal was cut off the milled edges remained. The gold thus obtained from a single twen- ty dollar coin was probably worth about 50 cents, and the coin itself, to all appearances, had not been tam