I can’t really afford to buy gold from fabrication companies so
have to “roll my own” from melted scrap. This is always 14kt and
having gotten awful tired of beating down 14kt bezels, bought
some 18kt gold to roll into bezel wire. Does anyone have a tip on
how to efficiently do this? Or should I just roll sheet down to
gauge and then cut strips with snips? Or is this a dumb
question… Dave
Dave, No such thing as a dumb question. (unless you don’t ask
it !) Try rolling round wire flat-- heavier the gauge the wider
the bezel. This leaves a consistant width and a clean (if
slightly rounded) edge. No shear burrs or curl to deal with.
later, MTR
.........bought some 18kt gold to roll into bezel wire. Does
anyone have a tip on how to efficiently do this?
G’day (again) Dave; I too can’t afford much high carat gold. But
my method for making bezels in silver is to use fine silver
preferably. I have cast it using 5mm x 6cm rod moulds (home made
of course) then roll the rods down to 2-3 mm square wire
with the vee-grooved rollers.(using a borrowed mill!) I then roll
the square wire down to 2 - 3mm x 0.5mm strip. With appropriate
annealing of course. However, I find it simpler these days to buy
2mm x 0.5mm fine silver strip from a NZ supplier. Surprisingly
cheap. Use a similar method for gold.
If you want to purify gold, you can cast the scrap to a rod,
button or some suitable shape, then using a cyanide bath (not the
same you used for the silver!) plate it on to a stainless steel
strip from which it is easily scraped off. Re-cast the fine
gold, make square wire of suitable size, then roll it to strip.
Cheers (again)
In your quest for making your own bezel wire you did not say if
you needed a step on it to set a stone onto.
There is a simple way to do this. Take a piece of tool steel
plate about 80m/m long X 30m/m wide and needs to be in an
annealed state. In the centre of the 30m/m width cut a groove
with square corners at the bottom approx. 1 to 1.5 m/m deep and 2
m/m wide for the length of the material. Place say a 3m/m well
annealed and put the whole through the rollers with a brass
plate between the tool steel and the bottom roller to safe guard
your rollers. Roll down till you get to your required thickness.
You will have to experiment with the diameter of your material as
this will extrude in both directions and my be a good or bad
thing.
If you want to purify gold, you can cast the scrap to a rod,
button or some suitable shape, then using a cyanide bath (not
the same you used for the silver!) plate it on to a stainless
steel strip from which it is easily scraped off. Re-cast the
fine gold, make square wire of suitable size, then roll it to
strip.
Both silver and copper will dissolve in the cyanide and also
partially plate back out in addition to the gold. Though the
minimum voltage required to plate out the gold is less than that
required for the silver or copper, the difference is small. The
gold will tend to preferentially plate out first, so your
deposit on the anode will be much higher karat, but don’t assume
the result to be truly fine gold. It won’t be. Especially once
you’ve done a fair amount in that bath, and increased the amount
of copper and silver it’s holding in solution. You can improve
things some with agitation, but it’s still not all that reliable
without some stringent controls, and a starting ingot that’s
already high karat. The effect to keep in mind works like this:
When you first apply the voltage, gold plates out on the anode.
That depletes the gold content of the solution right at the anode
surface, so gold only continues to plate out as fast as it can
diffuse to the surface replacing the metal lost already. Though
the plating action (bubbling) brings new solution to the anode.
you’re still requiring physical movement of the ions through the
solution. The result is that a certain percentage of the copper
and silver ions near the surface are going to see sufficient
potential to be able to also plate out, even if the overall
voltage on the bath seems not high enough.
Hi Dave, 18k gold will spoil you for all time. It is such nice
metal to work with. If you need a 3mm high bezel, make 2.3mm
square wire, anneal it and then roll it flat.
Dave