Recycling old Jewellery : Melting down gold and making something new!

Hi, in the past week I have been busy in the studio with a particular commission. The brief was to use some sentimental pieces of jewellery, that were unworn and gathering dust, and make something new!
So many of us have pieces of jewellery that we have bought or acquired and they become out of date and in some respects unwanted, yet we are loath to get rid of them as they often hold special memories for us.


I was given 3 yellow gold rings that were 9 carat and 1 white gold ring. The first job was to remove the stones from 2 of the rings, then very brutally snip the rings into smaller chunks for the big melt!

Keeping the white gold separate, the yellow gold is placed in a 'crucible' and using my gas and oxygen torch and heated to a temperature of around 800 centigrade.

The metal will melt and take on an almost liquid state, like mercury in a thermometer.
When the metal reaches this state it is poured into the ingot mould. As soon as molten metal is poured it is instantly cooled by the cast iron and starts to solidify. The white lump you see in the image, above the poured gold, is a scrunched up piece of wet kitchen paper. The wet paper helps cool the metal and serves as a barrier to prevent the molten metal from spreading itself too thin in the mould, keeping it in a nice thick strip.

Don't quench the metal, leave to cool, as it will stress the metal if cooled suddenly in water. The strip will then need to be put through the rolling mills.

I tend to roll the metal approximately three times before I then anneal. Melting metal down puts stress on it and it can become brittle, annealing is important to save any stress fractures or cracks.

The gold is rolled out methodically, annealing when hard and adjusting the rollers, to slowly thin the metal. I was aiming for a strip that would be at least 75mm long to enable me to make it into a UK size V, and is approximately 1mm thick. The band is approximately 10mm wide at the front, tapering to 5mm at the back, making it comfortable as a thumb ring.

The metal is then tapped around a ring stick/mandrel to shape into size, and soldered with a 9ct solder and flux.

I then needed to think about the texture required for the design. Using a ball burr in the pendant motor I practised the effect on a scrap piece of copper.

A bit of filing is need on the inside and the sides

Really pleased with the textured effect in the gold!

Classes before half term break

A lovely silver and Turquoise ring finished in class. The stone was a nice cabochon approximately 10mm round with a prominent vein through it, and only a couple of pounds to buy!

We made a rub over bezel setting, which was quite quick to do as we used a 3mm sterling silver bezel strip or 'pancake reel'. The strip is only 0.3mm thick so super thin, but very pliable.You can shape a lot of your setting with your fingers, cutting off the excess with a sharp pair of snips, which is a better option to using a saw that will buckle the metal.

As long as you are careful with the soldering, melting it being the biggest hazard (because it is so thin!) it is much quicker to work with. than making your own setting from silver sheet.