This takes place in the rolling-room, where the short, thick ingots are pressed between two steel rollers, again and again, till they are rolled down into long thin ribbons of metal about the thickness of a coin.
The next step in the work is to draw the metal ribbons through a "draw-plate," to bring them down to an exactly uniform thickness. This pulling through a narrow slit in a steel plate hardens the metal, and again and again it has to be put in the fire and brought to a light red to make it soft and pliable. This drawing and annealing brings each band of metal to just the right thickness and condition, and we may go on and see the cutting-presses that stamp out the round pieces of metal called "planchets." A workman takes a ribbon of gold and inserts the end in the immense jaws of the press, and they bite, bite and bite, and the round bits of gold drop in a shower into a box below.
[Illustration: POURING THE MELTED GOLD INTO THE MOLDS.]
"This press," says the usher, "is cutting double-eagles; and in the single moment, by the watch, that we have been looking at it, it has cut forty-five hundred dollars' worth. The same number of cuts would make only two dollars and twenty cents if made in copper."
The machine goes on hastily biting out the round planchets to the end of the ribbon, and then the guide holds up the long strip full of holes, much as you have seen the dough after the cook has cut out her ginger-snaps. These perforated bars go back to the furnace to be melted over.
"The planchets," says the guide, "after being annealed in those furnaces which you see at the rear of the room, are taken upstairs and most carefully weighed."
None but women are employed in the weighing-room, and so delicate are the scales that they will move with the weight of a hair. If a planchet is found too light, it is thrown aside to be remelted; if only slightly over the proper weight, a tiny particle is filed off from the edge; but if the weight is much in excess, it is to go back to the furnace. Nothing but perfection passes here, you see.
Now, one final washing in acid, then in water, and these much-enduring bits of metal are admitted to the coining-room, there to receive the stamp which testifies to their worth.