Gold into jewelry
 

Anyone know of a good website or company that will take the gold you find and put it into jewelry? maybe with some gem stones and quartz or something? Or about how much gold you would need to do something nice like a stone with some gold wrapping around it- like an ounce, half ounce, pennyweights etc... I have a few penny weights of fines I would like to put on some kind of stone, like have it melted down and make some necklace for my wife.
Thanks

Re: Gold into jewelry
 

Turning your mined nuggets into gold wire to wrap around a stone or a piece of quartz is a nice idea. It's not very complicated and I'm sure there will be a few local jewelers in your area who would be more than willing to help you. Look for a mom and pop store store that does custom design work, stay away from mall stores and any big chain stores.

Depending on the actual karat of your mined nuggets, the jeweler may recommend adding some alloy to harden the wire for durability and to bring your materiel to 14k or 18k. Make sure to ask him to return the extra wire, if there is any.

Depending on where you live there are gem and mineral shows that travel around and display at exhibition halls. This might be a good place to pick up a bargain on an unusaul mineral or rough gemstone that would make an interesting piece.

Re: Gold into jewelry
 

Montecristo speaks with wisdom...I ALWAYS used a guy who was the Vice President of our local Gem and Mineral Society. They are all gold bugs who have a few actual jewelers in their ranks. They are VERY REASONABLE when it comes to fashioning jewelry with your material, and can even spice things up with some gems of their own!!!

Re: Gold into jewelry
 

Call area jewelers. Many of them repair & fabricate jewelry. They can certainly tell you where you can find what your're looking for.:getdown:

Re: Gold into jewelry
 

one of the best classes i ever took was investment casting for jewelry making. it was a 6-week class that was hands-on & covered all the details. lost-wax, vacuum casting, etc.

as soon as i finished i took it a second time. the price was right.

one technology that's gotten a lot more affordable is 3D printing of mold patterns. the way that works is, you make a 3D model on the computer of your jewelry design, then add in a gate & sprue (things that relate to the flow of the molten metal when it's cast).

you send the file to someone with a stereolithography system, you get back a piece of acrylic identical to the 3D model. set it up in the investment (which is like Plaster of Paris but is more porous so that trapped air is pushed into the investment when the molten metal rushes into the mold cavity), bake out the acrylic to empty the mold chamber (at about 1100 degrees F), then stick the investment mold assembly in the centrifugal casting mechanism (while the investment is still hot, that way the metal flows better).

of course, you don't need to go the 3D route, you can also get some casting wax and just build up THE piece of jewelry, i.e. the setting that will hold the nugget. then do a cast-in-place. gold melts about 200 degrees hotter than silver, so you can do a cast-in-place where the gold is embedded in the investment, the wax is baked out, and the molten silver is injected, sort of encapsulating the gold in (hopefully) an artistic manner.

Re: Gold into jewelry
 

Let me assure you that if you take 'your' gold to anyone to melt and work with, what you'll get in return will not be 'your' gold. Your metal may be alloyed into the piece, but, dollars to donuts they'll just subtract the weight of your metal (value) from the bill. And 'your' metal just goes in the scrap barrel to be sent in for refining.
Jewelers work with alloys that they are assured flow correctly so they don't need to re-do they're work, cast multiple pieces per tree, the amount of metal used is considerably larger than the piece produced.
So, if you took in a large amount of gold and requested he/she only do your piece, using only your metal, and either let them keep the remainder for/towards payment or asked for the tree back. That's the only way I see it working and I don't see it being cheap.