Techniques for Assessing Fake 400 Ounce Gold-Plated Tungsten

[abduLMaria]

the background article on the Rumor about gold-plated tungsten bars.  this web page is loaded with precious metal ads; i would prefer to see an article from Bloomberg.  but it does look like something is going on - so far there is a NYMex investigation, and an arrest in Hong Kong.
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article14996.html

the RUMOR is that Hong Kong has received 60 tons of fake gold from the US and TPTB are sorting out what to do about it.  the resignation of a NYMex executive adds some meat to the story; his office was responsible for keeping the registry of the gold bars.  when he came under investigation, it was time to "spend more time with his family".

SLAM is a tool i was introduced to as a way of non-destructively assessing welds and bonds in electronic packaging.

5 or 6 papers on the subject reveal a range of measurement size capabilities and tissue capabilities.

approx. description of technique
http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet ... s&gifs=yes

"For biological materials, the microscope's resolution is around 20 micrometers"
http://www.brl.uiuc.edu/Facilities/scan ... cility.php

"Scanning laser acoustic microscopy (SLAM) was used to visualize creep damage distribution in the gas-pressure-sintered silicon nitride after creep at 1300°C in 4-point bending."
http://www.springerlink.com/content/nw5x2q7u54271040/

"A preliminary non-destructive analysis of the welded area between ceramic samples (monolithic ZrO2 or Si3N4) and metals (stainless steel or alluminum alloys) by Scanning Laser Acoustic Microscope (SLAM) was carried out."  (metal-ceramic joints are very common in the high-power radar tube industry.)
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=1811279

"Amphibian limb regeneration curves generated by the scanning laser acoustic microscope"
http://www.jhc.org/cgi/content/abstract/34/1/53

so, the question is - could SLAM be used to non-destructively assess 400 ounce gold bars ?

it's a very relevant question right now because the Precious Metals world is buzzing about some assays that were done by China, in Hong Kong, on 400 ounce bars received from the US.  the RUMOR is that 60 tons are so affected - so far.

tungsten is one of the few materials that has a density similar to gold; tungsten is $10 a pound.

my bet is that a 400 ounce gold-plated tungsten bar will "ring" differently than a solid gold bar under SLAM examination.

side-stepping the outstanding question of possible counterfeiting of US 400 ounce gold bars ... is SLAM a viable tool for assessing 2 different 28 pound metal bars ?

tungsten is very brittle, the opposite of gold.  you can't make "tungsten leaf" like you can with gold.  i think the difference in their acoustic properties MIGHT make SLAM a viable exam. technique.

Second Question - what other non-destructive exam. techniques, acoustic or otherwise, might be suitable for assessing metal samples of this size ?  roughly 20 cm (8 inches) x 80 cm (3 inches) x 45 cm (1 1/2+ inches).

[thirdeyewise]

in their latest audio DBS and Mr. Rafeeq talk extensively on the fake gold and all its implications.

[Christopher Marlowe]

I listened to the DBS report. They talked a lot about this, but Smith acknowledged the facts were a little slim. DBS also cited a story on his site that had a little more info. That one was written by Benjamin Fulford. I haven't figured that guy out yet. He seems very bright, but he has that weird speech impediment. Which is not to say that people with speech impediments are not trustworthy....  The other story BF was out in front on was the "China earthquake was caused by the high powered energy beam from Alaska" story.  Maybe. I could believe either one of these stories. But they have that same "far out" quality, and both are supported by the same amount of tested facts.  And then I like to throw the speech impediment on top of all that....

I read somewhere that this tungsten/gold scam was already tried in Canada back in Joe Clark's day, but I don't have Lexis/Nexis so I couldn't research that story. I also read that the Canadian Mint in Ottawa is missing 17,000 ounces, and it was suggested that the missing ounces were in the form of tungsten...

http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=2253586&utm

I'm becoming lazy, trying to affect an ominous pause by overusing the ellipsis....

I would like to get to the bottom of this story. What do I know for sure? Uh, tungsten has a density close to gold, within a third of a percent? That means a pure gold 400 oz bar would be off by a little over an ounce? But the 400 oz bars are not usually pure gold, and usually don't weight exactly 400 oz.? (The question marks show that I really don't know shit for sure. But as Rumsfeld liked to say, there are the known unknowns, and the unknown unknowns. Rumsfeld. How utterly fucking stupid was he?)

Uhh...Testing. I don't think Archimedes would be able to figure this out if the 400 oz bars are generally not 99.99.

Electric Resistivity: I read that the differences is very small. Gold = 2.44×10−8; Tungsten = 5.60×10−8; DBS said you could measure this with an oscilloscope.  I don't really know that an oscilloscope is.  I think an oscilloscope is what they used to hunt the shark in "Jaws". An oscilloscope has a bouncing ball on a graph and there are knobs beneath. Sometimes there are two graphs. Sometimes there are a lot of knobs.      

Sound: This one might work. Tungsten velocity of sound is 5174 meters/second and Gold velocity of sound = 3240 meters/second. Which means tungsten is nearly twice as fast sounding as gold. Which means tungsten sounds faster.  A lot faster. So, if you take a pure gold bar you could test it by whacking it with a hammer. Then you could whack another bar with a hammer.  If the other bar sounds a lot faster, it is tungsten. If it sounds a lot slower, the hammer might be made of tungsten.

How many bars? I have heard a lot of different numbers. It could be just a few bars or 5600 bars. How do we know how many bars? Here's a tip: if you're going to make up a lie, make it sound like a rough estimate.

Here's the thing about Benjamin Fulford.  It's not just the speech impediment. He reminds me of this guy I knew when I was a kid, named Stacy.  First of all, don't name your kid Stacy.  Stacy had trouble making friends...because his name was Stacy. And even at the tender age of 10, he had already earned the reputation as a bullshitter. Why? He told lies because he wanted to impress people. Why? Because he hoped that if he impressed people, they would like him and they would be his friend. Why did he need friends so badly? Because his parents named him Stacy.

Where are the bars? China? Did China discover some bad bars? If they did, then the counterfeitters are probably dead. I don't really know anything about China, but I heard they have the death penalty in China. I heard they have mobile death vans with lethal injections. Is that true? Does the guy who drives the van have a hard time meeting girls? Yes, he does.

Where did the bars come from? I have heard Fort Knox and/or London. Proof? Uhm...

At the bottom of all this, the problem is that if you discover that you have a bunch of worthless gold bars you won't want anyone to find out about it. You will struggle like hell to avoid that because you don't really lose until people KNOW that your gold isn't real.  It's like the Mark Twain story about the guy with the 1,000,000 pound note. Or it's like the movie because I didn't actually read the story. As long as people think the note is good, the guy has good credit. No one can cash the note because they can't make the change. But they don't have to worry about getting their money because the guy has a note for 1,000,000 pounds.

So at the bottom of all this, I don't have any facts because anyone with personal knowledge would wisely shut their traps. If anyone knows of any more sources I would be interested in finding out more.

[Ognir]

That one was written by Benjamin Fulford

I informed Daryl about this nutjob and the story was pulled from TFC

[abduLMaria]

At the bottom of all this, the problem is that if you discover that you have a bunch of worthless gold bars you won't want anyone to find out about it. You will struggle like hell to avoid that because you don't really lose until people KNOW that your gold isn't real.  It's like the Mark Twain story about the guy with the 1,000,000 pound note. Or it's like the movie because I didn't actually read the story. As long as people think the note is good, the guy has good credit. No one can cash the note because they can't make the change. But they don't have to worry about getting their money because the guy has a note for 1,000,000 pounds.

that's the thing - as was noted during the DBS interview, if for example Russia ended up with some of the fake bars, they wouldn't want anybody to know about it.

so the news sort of passes the "smell test" - if there were such a problem, people would be keeping their cards close to their chest.  also, the Zio-bankers in NYC have proven they can't be trusted with ANYTHING - mortgage-backed securities, etc.

in this case, holders of Precious Metals have begun to distrust paper gold and to make the shift to physical gold.  from the Precious Metal experts & enthusiasts at http://GoldisMoney.info/
the ratio of paper silver to physical silver was about 10:1 - until recently.  there is one news story which i think was accepted as true that there was a recent (last 2 months) withdrawal of about 5% of Comex silver (someone decided to exchange their paper silver for the real thing.)

the same paper-games are being played with gold.

if the story about tungsten bars turns out to be false - it will be business as usual.  gold rises $100, declines $50, etc.

if the story about tungsten bars turns out to be true - i would expect it to "blow the roof off".  in terms of gold price and decline of trust in London and/or NYC based Zio-bankers.  some of whom would predictably cash in their "Israeli passport" chips.  actually, i wouldn't be surprised if this story dovetails with DBS' observation that some Zio-criminals have recently done just that, escaped to Israel.

it wasn't just China's Hong Kong gold that was in the clutches of Zio-bankers.  Germany's gold was kept in NYC, until about a year ago they asked for it back.  3-4000 tons worth.  given that it takes a LOT of time to set up a production run of gold-plated tungsten bricks, why would the Zio-bankers stop at stealing China's gold ?  why wouldn't they steal Germany's gold ?  Germany has let their hands be tied re. accusations of "anti-Semitism"; they might be more cooperative than the Chinese if they discovered fake gold.

can't help but wonder if Merkl has had conversations with Obama about this.

i wouldn't be surprised if Zio-wood makes a movie with tungsten fake gold bars as part of the plot-line.

P.S.  WOW !  Hong Kong is down 4% on Friday Nov. 27.  Europe is 'flat', up about 1/2% (the equity markets, that is).

http://money.cnn.com/data/world_markets/