Jewelry Making | Jewellery Design & Fabrication

Jewelry Design & Layout

When setting gemstones in jewelry, usually the shape of the stone will dictate the shape and size of the setting. When designing a piece of jewelry from scratch, a good starting point would be to layout your selection of stones to get a mental picture of what the finished piece will look like.

It is helpful to draw a series of thumbnail sketches to flesh out your design (sketches and designs courtesy of Michael Borofka). This is also a good opportunity work out solutions for linking, clasp design, and basic structure.

Alloying Gold & Forming a Gold Ingot

Most metals are dark grey to whitish-grey (metallic grey). There are only two pure metals with any actual color: gold, which is yellow; and copper, which is red. Pink or rose gold is pure gold with copper added to it. Most gold in jewelry is not pure 24k gold, but a mixture of pure gold alloyed (mixed) with other metals which strengthen it or alter its color.

Alloying a metal is the process of creating a new metal out of a combination of base metals. 22k gold is 91.6% pure gold, and 18 carat is 75.0% gold. Gold is usually alloyed with copper, nickel, palladium, silver, or zinc. The ratio of these additional base metals will determine the gold's final color and strength.

First Michael will melt the scrap metal in a clay graphite crucible with a "reducing flame" from an acetylene or propane torch. The metal is melted as rapidly as possible to reduce the evaporation of low-melting-point metals in the alloy and to prevent the inclusion of oxygen, which can add to the porosity of the metal. The gold or silver is heated to around 335º F which is the point that the metal will flow or be "liquidus".

The molten alloy is slowly poured into a pre-heated ingot mold and allowed to cool (freezing). During the freezing stage, the metal crystallizes and solidifies. When the ingot has completely frozen, or "set", it can be removed from the mold.

On To:

Page 2: Gold Annealing & Cold Rolling

Page 3: Stone Setting

Page 4: Final Finishing & Assembly