[AT] OT -- Fort Knox & gold

[John Hall]

Great story!!

John

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Larry D Goss" <rlgoss at evansville.net>
To: "Antique tractor email discussion group" <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Sent: Friday, April 27, 2007 5:35 PM
Subject: [AT] OT -- Fort Knox & gold


>I had a long discussion with Rolla today about life at the gold respository
> at Fort Knox.  He was one of better than 20 stackers who were working 
> there
> back in the 1930's.  I asked him specifically about the French gold.  He
> said that was the only country that did not use the purest gold they could
> get. Theirs was alloyed and never had a better purity than 87%.  He thinks
> it was alloyed with cadmium, and it was not only a definite pink color, 
> but
> it also was much harder than the US and British gold.  It had a ring to it
> when you plunked it down in a stack and if you didn't watch it, it would
> bounce.  All the other gold was malleable and the bars would friction-bond
> together when being stacked.  The stackers got used to stacking the pure
> gold (which didn't bounce) and flying gold bricks in the French gold 
> caused
> a number of injuries among the stackers.  He says only he and Bill 
> Harrison
> got through with stacking French gold without getting broken legs, crushed
> hands, or cracked ribs.  Rolla and Bill were both tall slim kids at that
> time and they got the job of stacking when the gold got close to the
> ceiling.  He moved $26 million in just over 9 months time.  At that time,
> that would have been 26 tons of gold.  Rolla said Bill sang dirty songs 
> the
> whole time they were working.  He bought them from a peddler who came
> through Elizabethtown by the name of Chief Cody.  Apparently some of Chief
> Cody's best "sellers" were dirty songs and French postcards.
>
> Rolla said his main job was to maintain the three bullion scales at the
> vault.  Each beam scale had pans on either side that were about two feet 
> in
> diameter and the fulcrum for the scale was about seven feet off the floor.
> When the scales started showing sensitivity problems, it was Rolla's job 
> to
> lap both the knife edge and the flat steel plate it rested on back into
> perfectly smooth condition once again.  The steel plate was about seven
> inches square and the knife edge was the same length.  The scales had to 
> be
> lapped (polished absolutely smooth and flat) once again about every three
> months.
>
> Now I understand why Rolla  expressed absolute shock when I complained to
> him a week ago that a local jeweler said it was impossible to polish out 
> an
> engraving that we needed removed so that corrected information could be 
> put
> in its place.  The jeweler said he couldn't do it because it was stainless
> steel instead of silver.  Rolla had lots of experience at polishing out 
> the
> grooves in the Fort Knox scales caused by the weight of the gold and 
> poises
> on the scales.
>
> The man amazes me sometimes.
>
> Larry
>
>