I am new in using gold on my jewerly designs. After being very
successful in sweat soldering small pieces of gold to several of my
designs (thanks to all of you and your wonderful help) I have
encountered a major problem on my latest piece. I got a tiny bit of
silver solder on the gold when I went to attach the bale onto my
pendant. So, ok, just file it off using my various grades of sand
paper like I always do to eliminate the solder - oops!!!. The
solder was still there and so was a slight indentation in the gold.
Seems like it went through the gold. (I am using 28g on 20 g silver
so the gold is rather thin and if I sand any further I will really
strike silver!!!) Not only that but when I was cleaning up the gold
on the body of the piece to get it ready to polish I noticed a few
tiny little pock marks on that gold also. I could take the whole
thing apart and start again with new gold ( I do not have a rolling
mill and would have to scrap the gold I used before.) Or I could try
to salvage the piece by being a little creative - I was thinking of
creatively adding a small piece of silver onto the indented gold on
the bale but then I still have the problem of the several tiny
pockmarks on the gold on the body of the piece. I could also add
cross hatch marks to the gold to kind of mask it…anyway…I
still have this problem and I do not want it to happen again. Have
any of you had this happen to you with gold? Someone mentioned
impurities in the gold that you would not know you have until you end
up having this problem.
Elle For every step forward I seem to be taking two steps backwards,
but as they say, you learn from your
mistakes!