Santa Fe Symposium, World Gold Council

     I feel like I am beginning to sound like a broken record but
the Santa Fe Symposium  is about the only place in the US where  
scientific and technical papers for the jewelry industry are
presented and published if you have a question of a technical
nature it does not hurt to look at the symposium web site
http://www.santafesymposium.org/  they have abstracts from all the
papers on the site and you can see if the paper looks interesting
enough to order the book it is in. 

In addition to the Santa Fe Symposium James, the World Gold
Council’s “Gold Technology” hardcopy magazine is essential reading
for any goldsmith wanting to keep abreast of current developments in
the field.

Issue 34 Spring 2002’s contents aRe:

1/ Application of "Lean Manufacturing" in jewellery manufacture.
2/ Laser aplications in gold jewellery production
3/ Getting optimum performance from your investment powder
4/ CAD/CAM technologies transforming the goldsmith's workshop
5/ World Gold Council Website - http://www.gold.org/
6/ Optimising carat gold alloys for the manufacturing process
7/ WGC Technical publications (some >> interesting stuff here!)

Many of the questions that are posted on Orchid with monotonous
regularity (particularly w.r.t. investment casting) have been
addressed in this publication at some time. Seeing that it’s FREE I’d
have thought every “goldsmith” on the face of the planet would be a
subscriber! The W.G.C. also produces “Gold Bulletin” which deals
with developments in gold chemistry and is >> technical.

The contact details aRe:

World Gold Council
45 Pall Mall,
London
SW1Y 5JG
England
ph: 0044 20 7930 5171
fx: 0044 20 7839 6561

Allan Heywood