Moving Up From Silver To Gold Ring Fab. ?
Q: I've been anxiously waiting for replies to my previous post asking for help soldering and working with gold after becoming proficient with silver ring fabrication. I haven't seen any replies here. Peter, can you re- post my original request? Or maybe nobody else has done this? 8>D
A: If you're going to start qworking in gold I'd suggest that you start with 18ct. yellow. It is by far the easisest to use and although it's double the price of 9ct it makes sense to use the best if your workmanship is good (and it is - I've looked at your pages) Soldering is no different except that you don't get the warnings that you do with silver as it comes near to melting. Just have a go and see what happens! Firescale is no longer a problem (a great relief!), you need to be much more careful about collecting filings etc. Your current equipment will be fine for everything you want to do. Have a look at my web pages under books - we NEED books! I remember when I went over to using gold for the first time and that my level of attention to detail went sky high - simply, I think, because of my delight in the material. Fire scale, in silver, is a deep penetrating oxidation that persists even beyond initial pickling, and shows up again when you go to polish the piece. In gold, this doesn't occur. But on heating, gold alloys do still oxidize and discolor, so you still need to pickle the piece. Plus you need to remove fluxes, etc. The difference is that after pickling, when you polish the gold and it appears again metallic and bright, it's being honest with you. It really is a clean metallic surface, rather than hiding firestain underneath that would show up only when you put a final rouge finish on... And protecting gold from most