Hello! I’m 13 and plan to start a jewelry brand. Since I have just
entered the jewelry world and so inexperienced and new to these new
concepts, I have a few questions about enameling.
( 1 ) Is there any way what so ever that I can enamel gold
electroplated pieces?
( 2 ) Say I had a 14k piece I wanted to enamel; how would that
process go?
( 3 ) Same for sterling, how would that go?
(4 ) Same for stainless steel. You will probably direct me to your
enameling article but I read it and don’t understand the advanced
terms and words used so hopefully you can simplify it for a beginner
like me.
( 5 ) I heard about wet packing. Will that help answer any of my
questions or is that subject irrelevant?
Sorry for my inexperience and so many questions! Thanks a bunch!
Welcome to the world of enamelling:) the journey is hard but the
result is worth all your invested time, money, despair, anger and
happiness:)
My advice is to start with copper. Then you can goldplate the copper
piece that is already enamelled.
Then try silver and gold foil and after you will be comfortable to
work with enamels, wet packing, cloisonne and other techniques,
firing and finishing you can try silver and gold.
Is it better to enamel the piece first, whatever the metal is and
then do the gold or silver plating. The goldplated layer is so thin
that will burn and melt in the kiln into the base metal.
Congratulations on wanting to start enameling. It’s a lot of fun and
can keep you learning and producing beautiful jewelry and other items
for the rest of your life. If you can get a copy of Linda Darty’s
excellent book “The Art of Enameling”, you might find most of your
questions answered along with many you haven’t thought to ask yet.
Her book is available through Barnes & Nobel, Amazon and probably
your local library. Good luck, and enjoy the journey.
Sorry for my inexperience and so many questions! Thanks a bunch! As
an old smith to an aspiring young one, it is always good to see
someone with a dream. So despite NO one else here on this forum so
far bothering to reply and choosing to ignore your questions, I will
do so.
First I want more from you.
This is a big world, and with your name you could be absolutely
anywhere, so where are you living?
What kind of school are you at?
Have you mentioned this dream of yours to your parents? Because
theres no way I will tell you how easy it is to do enamelling,
without their written approval. You see, it involves dangerous tools
and heat, without proper safety procedures you would get injured. We
cant have that, can we?
So to answer your questions
It is possible to enamel on electroplate with the right low temp
enamels and a thick enough gold layer
Enamel on 14 ct gold is the same as on any other gold
Same again on silver, but it needs to be on better than 925 grade
for best results
No enamelling maker has as far as I know made enamels for
stainless steel. Ordinary steel, yes no problem.
Wet packing is just one of several ways to apply enamel to metal.
Mainly for cloisonne work. There are much easier and quicker ways.
I tried on stainless steel with every enamel made it didnt work.
Hello, Edward! It’s been so long and I’ve completely forgotten that
I emailed Ganoksin this question. I asked this question on October
26th of 2015 and not being aware of how the site worked, I didn’t see
any responses when I searched up the question the next day. It’s just
today (Feb. 14) that I decided to search my name in the archives and
rediscovered the question I asked. When I scrolled down, I saw the
words RE: [ORCHID] ENAMELING & METAL TYPES and “RE” meant
response/repky which meant people had replied to my question the very
next day after I asked it.
Unfortunately, after I asked my question and saw no responses
(although today I found out 3 people responded the very next day), I
pursued the answers to my questions somewhere else and now I’m an
enamelling expert (meaning I have a lot of KNOWLEDGE of enamelling,
but I’ve never touched enamel in my life). When I saw your response
though, I felt kind of bad about not knowing how the website worked
at the time and not being aware that someone responded to my
questions. I decided that although it’s now February 14 (4 months
later) and I discovered the answers to all my questions somewhere
along the way, I’d still say thank you for your response.
To answer your questions :
I live in Chicago
I’m in 8th grade and I’m graduating in 4 months
My parents are totally fine with me working with such tools. They
don’t know anything about what I’ll be working with, they just know
that I’m launching a jewelry brand and trust that I know what I’m
doing. I’m a very quick-learner and I’m making sure that I do ample
research on jewelry studio safety.
Thanks so much for caring and your response!
P. S although I already know the answers to all of the questions I
had 4 months ago, I just posted another question today called “Making
A Certain Hinge”. Maybe you can search that up in the archives to
help me with that question.