erm, actually...
I was dead wrong. I got the whole thing backwards. Sorry! I forgot that Blocks have a 5x material multiplier, so making it out of stone (aka gold nuggets) blocks is better than gold bars, although they're still better than unshaped gold nuggets. And worst of all is gold (metal) blocks, except that there's a glitch right now allowing you to make them out of 1 bar each.
did some wiki research, it looks like the ore and the metal have the same value, of 30 (backed up by the raws)
blocks have a base value of 5
so like you said, gold blocks would be worth 150 each, allowing me to cram 5x the value in to a given surface area, which is awesome
All of this is dependent on gold nuggets' value vs gold bars. With platinum, nuggets are more valuable than bars. This is very backwards, and I believe gold bars are more valuable than nuggets. So... while gold blocks would normally be the worst thing, right now it's the best.
so if understand, what you're saying is that since for gold, bars and ore are both worth 30, it makes more sense to just mason the ore in to blocks, since i'll have 150 per unit either way, and i won't need charcoal, and it saves me a step; but if bars were changed to be worth, say, 45, then it would be worth it to smelt and then turn them in to metal blocks, 'cause then each gold metal block would be worth 225, as opposed to the 150 of a gold ore block. is this right?
i appreciate the help, eventually we'll have a coherent theory of block dynamics and no one will need to be confused anymore