| Drawing |
Gold’s extraordinary ductility enables a single ounce to be made into fifty miles of thin gold wire. This process is called drawing. It can be done manually by using special leather-padded pliers to pull strips of gold through a gauge clamped in a vice.
A multi-die machine draws
gold
into wire for chain making
(Credit: World Gold Council)
But usually drawing is done mechanically by passing long strips of gold through dies designed to make round, square, rectangular or triangular wire. Multi-die machines operating at high speed progressively draw the gold through smaller and smaller openings to the required size.