PURSE160
HOURS16
FIRES4
BAR1/3
GOLD64.0
The office is cold and the balance is level enough.
Bar on the pan.
- BEAM
- —
- PAN
- 0.00 g
Nothing proven yet.
CUPELLATION 4 fires
Name a price.
- WARRANT
- —
- APPRAISED
- —
- HE WANTS
- —
- CREDIT
- —
Evidence, not guesswork. E A D switch bench, SPACE acts, ESC pauses.
AN ASSAY OFFICE ON THE CLODE
BINANCE
Three consignments of gold-bearing bars reach your bench. A beam balance resolves a mass, a furnace resolves a fineness, and both are wrong in the way that costs money. Weigh it, assay it, and name a price.
- WEIGH
- Weights on the pan, then read the beam. A dirty pivot is a slow beam and a fat reading.
- ASSAY
- The cut face is free and can lie. The furnace costs an hour and tells you the truth.
- PAY
- Offer what the metal is worth to you. The books close at the closing price, not the opening one.
THE OFFICE IS HELD
The beam is still.
Nothing is turning. Pick it up where you left it.
THE OFFICE HANDBOOK
What the instruments actually tell you.
- BEAM
- The beam settles on the difference between the bar and your weights, scaled by how clean the pivot is. It also carries an offset — subtract it from every reading. On a 0.4 g bead that offset is most of the answer.
- FACE
- Colour on a cut face is worth about ±70 dwt and costs nothing. A plated bar has a bright skin over a poor heart, and the file takes 0.08 g to find out.
- STONE
- A streak brackets fineness at ±38 dwt and costs nothing. It will also tell you whatever the stone was doped to tell you. Proofing it costs an hour and twelve coin.
- FURNACE
- Cupellation burns the base metal out and leaves a bead. A short fire leaves base in and reads high; a long fire volatilises gold and reads low. A bigger scrap is a truer scrap, and it comes out of the bar.
- BOOKS
- You buy on a letter of credit. At the close, whatever you hold is sold at that day's price, and the difference is your profit or your ruin.
- KEYS
- E A D bench · SPACE act · 0 set weights · F fire · M mute · H this · R restart · ESC pause.
THE BOOKS CLOSE
The parcel is settled.
Gold closed at 63.2 the fine ounce.
THE LEDGER IS CLOSED
Solvent.
Three consignments, weighed and assayed.