Richard first made one of these when he had built up a certain amount of 9ct yellow gold scrap and didn’t want to sell it for the pittance he knew he would get for it. He melted it into a blob and hammered it out into a bar, breaking a hammer in the process! (He fixed it and has bought more appropriate hammers since). This was before Richard had a rolling mill, and the end result was unusual but lovely. It’s quite a knack to melt small amounts of gold without the oxidation messing up the purity, but he’s pretty good at it now. The art is now getting the right degree of crudeness, as it has become easier with practice for him to make them more uniform than when he was flying by the seat of his pants. Richard can also make these by melting old gold, perhaps from inherited wedding rings.
