Jewelry Metals

Gold, silver, and platinum are the most commonly used jewelry metals. Learn about their physical properties, alloys, and history.

Precious metal clay is just what it sounds like: fine silver or gold ground extremely small and suspended in a binder to create clay. For both novice…

Getting a brilliant polish is one of the most important steps to finishing fine jewelry. Learn the tools and techniques you’ll need for polishing…

If you learn the meaning of the trade terms for gold weight and karat, you can calculate the gold content value of any item as well as the jeweler’s…

The basics of pewter as a precious metal.

Understanding the differences between coin silver, sterling silver, mexican silver, german silver, etc.

This article will hep you understand how to calculate karat content of gold, what to watch out for, and what the various marks on gold jewelry mean.…

Underkarating is a fraudulent practice whereby a jeweler represents a piece of jewelry or gold as containing more precious metal than it actually…

Understanding how the price of an underlying jewelry metal, such as gold, impacts the price of your finished jewelry.

Why your skin gets discolored by certain jewelry metals, and what you can do about it.

This is a quickie, the day the Kraft Masters were setting up Robert who is the plant manager at Precious Metals West casting platinum.

Milling Platinum Sterling-A New Alloy. This year at Kraftwerks the refiners of a brand new alloy were there to demonstrate this new and interesting…

Mokume-Gane Metal Techniques with James Binnion. This is a very old technique of fusing various different metals together using pressure and…

This new alloy is called Platinum Sterling, and is mostly fine silver with a modifier of Platinum in it (4-6%). There is also a small amount of copper.…

Soldering is one of the most useful techniques a metal smith can have. It is used both to create new pieces and to repair damaged jewelry.