Glitter bombed

[Arancio601]

I recently bought a couple ofvintage watchmaker’s drawers for cheap and was happy just to get the drawers for storage of my watch bits. It might be a slow process working out what the many pieces are since it’s all in Japanese or unlabeled.
Anyway, purpose of this thread is the surprise in the bottom drawer. Due to the expected rough and tumble of international freight I’ve had a gold explosion. A very fine gold dust. What would this have been used for? My skills don’t exceed seals and crystals so I have no idea…

 

[Archer]

Not something I've ever had need for as a watchmaker, so I doubt it has a watchmaking purpose. If it's real gold, you have a few bucks there though!

 

[WestCoastTime]

If it originated from Japan, then could be related to Kintsugi enamel / ceramics repair.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintsugi

Some people like the decorative effect even on otherwise unbroken pieces.

 

[sheepdoll]

I used to paint with enamels. (One thing I was doing was looking into dial repair.) Most enamel materials were stored in glass jars. They are made from some pretty nasty oxides, the worst which is lead. While lead was restricted in the 1990s. Selenium and Cadmium was not. Worse were some of the yellow oxides, these contained Uranium. Gold oxide is red, and commonly used to make red glass Gold does not like to oxidize. Gold leaf is green. Green light passes through pure gold. On the other hand all that glitters is not gold.

One of my co workers at Apple bought a gold mine. He was fascinated with the mining equipment and how it could be controlled with robotics and micro controllers. I pointed to him out that jewelers would file over a scrap of carpet to collect the dust. This would then be sent to the refiner. My co worker did the same thing in the early days of the web advertising for such gold mats, and scrap to run through his mining equipment. I still find it amusing that people will spend thousands on nasty chemicals, just to recover a few dollars of gold from electronics.

Also based on conversations with forum members here, on the chat. I also invested in a Gieger counter. The measurements from a dial only travel a few centimeters, if this gets ingested, it will linger for the rest of your life.

-j

 

[Arancio601]

Interesting thoughts. I’ll have to try and rest it somehow. Hoping it’s not Geiger counter worthy… all the parts are 50’s to 70’s. Might coat something with it and try to bake it…

 

[Arancio601]

sheepdoll

One of my co workers at Apple bought a gold mine.
-j

I’m in the wrong game.

 

[perks713]

Arancio601

I’m in the wrong game.

If I've learned anything from watching Gold Rush, buying the gold mine is the easy part...

 

[Archer]

perks713

If I've learned anything from watching Gold Rush, buying the gold mine is the easy part...

And that if your stuff breaks down all the time, you are clearly not doing enough preventative maintenance. Makes them all look incredibly dumb, but the show needs this manufactured drama I guess - otherwise it's just watching people dig holes...

 

[Vercingetorix]

Archer

And that if your stuff breaks down all the time, you are clearly not doing enough preventative maintenance. Makes them all look incredibly dumb, but the show needs this manufactured drama I guess - otherwise it's just watching people dig holes...

Reminds me of my brother in law and his claim that fisherman do everything as cheaply as possible. Comes from watching too much Deadliest Catch I think.

Edited: Sep 20, 2022

 

[sheepdoll]

perks713

If I've learned anything from watching Gold Rush, buying the gold mine is the easy part...

My freind's interest was in the slucing equipment. Which does seem to require a lot of maintenence. I was more impressed with his using the early internet to advertise for scrap material to run through it.

I tried looking the pages up on archive.org, but I can not find any of the later adverts. Just broken links.
-j