I was asked if it would be possible to create some tear drop shaped pendants made from 14k gold. The customer wants me to add some dried rose petals to the molten gold for sentimental reasons. My expectation is that the rose petals will burn off without leaving any visible trace. Is this correct, or will I contaminate the gold?
Also, is there a quick way to form tear drop shapes from the gold?
Thanks
no your rose petals will not contaminate the gold
they will burn off and in face the little bit of carbon will help clean out your crucible . I often take a hard wood stick and run it through my crucible before i melt silver or gold in it.
i think the rose petals is a very sensitive and wonderful idea
Les
Nothing will happen with your gold when melted with the rose petals.
They just turn in to carbon and that’s it as someone already mentioned.
Carbon will not have any cleaning effect on the gold.
It helps to absorb oxygen. Molten silver attracks oxygen very easy and lots
of it (>20% in volume).
Stearing molten metal with a DRY(!!) wooden stick can help to absorb
obundance oxygen but will not clean anything, at all.
I don’t understand why anyone like to run a wooden stick through a crucible
before metal is melted.
Anywaay, the idea of the rose petals is touching.
Sometimes we do things because that is the way we learn to do it and not question it.
Oxidisation happens with any metal that has copper added as an alloy
Sterling and all alloyed yellow and red golds. The carbon added to the crucible for these metals dose exactly what Pedro has explained.
My explanation of cleaning is a reference to removing Oxidisation (as much as possible) from the melting process allowing metals to alloy properly and reduce coring.
Scraping a hot crucible with a dry bit of wood not only adds a bit of carbon to the crucible it can also remove debris that is undesirable in a safe way without harming your crucible
This is what i was taught and seamed logical at the time so i have continued to do it. I have very little in the way of porosity issues or issues with brittleness when pouring ingots to be smithed or with my castings.
Pedro are you suggesting that this is a step not needed and i should exclude it from my process and that it might be a waist of time and energy?
I have always said that we must question the information we are given not because it might be untrue but that it might not be the only truth.
Les
Hello Les,
If your crucible is nicely covered with borax, you’ll not find any debris from earlier meltings.
The purpose of borax is to:
1.Prevend any loss of precious metals into the pores of the crucible
2.Collect the oxide of metals in the melting process.
3.Providing a smooth poor
Exception to this rule is when you melt filings. They like to form lots of little balls.
To my opinion, there is no need for having a wood stick “scraping” into that wanted layer of borax
The borax already does that job for you.
Liquid silver and oxygen like eachother very much and there is nothing wrong with that.
The problem is when the silver cools of liberating the obundancy of oxygen.
Copper like to adsorb this liberated oxygen producing firestain (cupricoxide) and exactly this is not what you like to have in silver. There is nothing you can to remove this firestain other then file/sand/polisch it down and turn the leftovers in for refinning.
Gold is much more forgiving then silver however, having firestain in gold is also possible.
Porosity is not only formed by tomuch heat or tomuch oxygen by the way.
Porosity can be caused by to small sprues and schrinking of the metal.
If you have fine castings using your method, by all means keep on doing it.
It is not up to me to change your way of working.
I only try to explain what the chemicals are doing for you, what the metals are doing when they are in a molten status and explain you briefly the process.
Best regards
Pedro
Thanks for that Pedro
It will go into the every growing deposit of knowledge.
Les
Thank you all for your replies.
Bree