Yes, you read that correctly. I have a customer who wants to have
her first born childs tooth eletroformed or plated. I’ve never heard
or done anything like this. Does anyone have any ideas or a person I
could contact?
Thanks,
Kirsten Reynolds
Try this company:
Galvanique
Alex Belykh,
1340 Hartford Ave., Johnston, RI 02919
401/944-6657,
One-of-a-kind and mass-production electroforming over plastic, wax &
other materials. Holloware a specialty.
Jeff Herman
Kent,
What do you want to do with the tooth? Focal point for a jewelry
piece? A plated curio?
A little background info. Electroforming gives you a thicker deposit
of the initial plated metal The plating bath most commonly used for
this process is a copper acid set up. The first build up is usually
copper. If you go this route, a mold could be made of the tooth. A
conductive paint, powder, has to be applied over the wax matrix in
order for it to plate. Just about any non conductive surface can be
electroformed. Remember the baby shoe fetish back in the days of
yore? The beauty of electroforming, is that after you get the
desired thickness, the wax can be evacuated, leaving a light, hollow
form, If you want to go for the gold, silver etc, the copper needs
to be plated with nickle.If you gold plate without the nickle
coverage, the copper object would “absorb” more gold then is
necessary… Anelectroformed object can be soldered, enameled etc.You
would want to do these procedures prior to plating with the precious
metals…
Simply plating the tooth is much easier The tooth would have to be
masked to prevent the the plating solution from interacting with the
original…The thickness is much thinner then the electroforming
procedure. In addition, the tooth would remain as the matrix.
Where to go to have this done? You might contact the folks who
publish “Metal Finishing Guide Book and Directory”
212 633 3100
360 Park Avenue South
NY NY 10010
If you are in the vacinity of an art/ technical school that has a
Jewelry/ Metal Arts Department you might want approach your quest in
this manner.
rp leaf