Palms

I want to make convincing gold nuggets (and/or bars), without using chemicals, tungsten, fire, or spending a fortune. I do not plan to do anything like selling it, but I just want to make it, for fun. And, it would be helpful if it was close to the weight of an actual nugget or bar. Thank you for your help.

If it just needs to look like gold, mold modeling clay into a block, stamp it with the letters "24K" and spray paint it gold. It won’t be nearly heavy enough, and won’t fool anyone who picks it up, but it will look good.

Lead bricks painted gold are closer, and may fool some people, but anybody with a scale and a tape measure can calculate the density, and gold is much denser than lead, 19.3g/cm^3, vs 11.34g/cm^3.

The density test is why you read about tungsten, which has a density similar to gold, 19.25g/cm^3.
A gold plated tungsten bar would pass the heft test, but that’s about all. Gold melts at 1,947°F, and Tungsten melts at 6,192°F. Any assayer would carefully drill a hole in the bar and test the shavings.

Interesting article:

http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2008-03/how-make-convincing-fake-gold-bars

Grandpa

Posted tungsten |