After making a few pieces from palladium I’ve ended up with quite a few small offcuts. I would like to melt them together and roll out some new sheet, but I’ve read that Pd will absorb oxygen and hydrogen when melted and will crack easily when worked. I only have oxy/propane or oxy/hydrogen torches. What are my chances of getting a workable lump?
Gary
A fellow jeweler in my area has a casting machine with an induction melter that uses cover gas. He graciously melted about an ounce of clean scrap for me and it rolled out perfectly. I think Jim Binnion presented a paper at Santa Fe symposium on casting palladium, you might ask him about an alternative, but any gas/oxygen combined torch will be useless.
Gary- Slim to none. Sorry.
Have fun and make lots of jewelry.
Jo Haemer timothywgreen.com
I often remelt Palladium and reuse it. The important difference is that I melt the scraps with an arc, under the cover of argon. I produced a video that is in the Orchid video files showing how I make the melt.
Thanks for the info guys, and confirming what I feared.
Now, I’ve got the Argon, if I could make an induction furnace…
Great job Kevin!
I often remelt Palladium and reuse it. The important difference is that I melt the scraps with an arc, under the coverof argon. I produced a video that is in the Orchid video files showing how I make the melt.
How do you create the arc?