GW1 Method

I did a run with GW1.

I found a very elaborate way to congeal powdered gold into buttons.


Today wasn't the day.

But that's okay. One step at a time at a time at a time...

However... I did get a tiny amount of weird green stuff on the outside of my graphite crucible like alexbr. Not sure what in the hell that is.

I tried 2 hours at 2,000f. All that remained was a gold button and a tiny amount of white powder on the rim of my crucible lid. And the green stuff that seemed to have sweated through. Otherwise the crucible held up pretty well. No failure, etc. Significant corrosion though so the walls of the crucible become extremely thin and furry on the outside. They would probably fail if another run was conducted. Graphite crucibles probably only work for one run. Hope you're rich!

So I had a gold pellet and no salt.... Possibly any or a combination of these factors
- An expanding seal like Kaowool is very necessary
- 2 hours is already too long, Nick's 1 hr recommendation is good.



I also just noticed that the gold had what looked like 3 cracks running down the surface. I'm not very familiar with metal cooling, etc.
If I'm optimistic, this might be a sign the gold is beginning to open up.
Otherwise it's probably just a normal artifact of gold cooling...

If you are using a kiln with a large space inside (unlike the R9D kiln Nick used), there will be a strnog oxidizing environment and your graphite will corrode and most likely will not last more than a few hours unless it has a thick wall.

I was about to try and make myself a graphite crucible with a coating of clay but then I found this.
http://www.amazon.com/Graphite-Crucible-Silica-Casting-Capacity/dp/B005B2M4QK
This is perfect and will absolutely prevent oxidative damage to the graphite in the kiln @2000f and you could probably fire continuously for 12 hours plus (speculation).

The lid however... will likely need to be custom fabricated.