Jewelers, both professional and amateur, have used just about every type of metal in existence in their creations. As new alloys and metals are adapted to jewelry making, such as titanium and stainless steel, they are also eagerly embraced and…

90% of the quality is in the last 10% of the work. A brilliant polish is the last and one of the most important steps in finishing a piece of fine jewelry. A high polish dazzles the eye and creates desire. It says, “Look at me, I am…

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. Your torch can also be used for annealing. What a jeweler calls soldering, would be called welding in…

In the last few years there has been a pleasant revival of popular interest in pewter, a two metal alloy consisting of 65-80% tin and 20-35% lead. In early New England most of the pewter used was shipped from England, the chief pewter designer…

Silver has always played somewhat of a second fiddle to gold as a precious metal. Still, the bright, white metal has had its moments, from William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” peroration to the Hunt brothers effort to corner the silver…

So how do you figure the karat content of the item? You need an accurate scale to determine how much a piece of gold or gold jewelry item weights. But it’s the amount of gold that presents a problem… 10K gold or 14K gold or 18K gold or 24K gold…

Knowing that gold is valuable and that there is a daily gold price id fine, but it’s not enough. There are a few other elements that need to fall within your familiarity. Consider weight. Gold and the metals used for alloying with gold are…

The price relationship between a fine piece of gold jewelry and the gold content generally isn’t all that predictably strict anyway. It’s true that as the ounce price of gold rises or falls there is somewhat of a price shift – admittedly, this…

Virtually no discussion of jewelry metals would be complete without mentioning this age-old issue. And the answer is, “Oh, yes, even 24K gold can cause skin discolorations for some people.”  That’s no test of quality of a precious…

In the last few years the sale of gold jewelry has been consistently making headlines over this issue of underkarating. What’s happening is that, despite federal laws to the contrary, many merchants are advertising and promoting sales of gold at a…

Robert casts some Platinum This is a quickie, the day the Kraft Masters were setting up Robert who is the plant manager at Precious Metals West (PMT) cast a platinum ring he was working on… Here is Daniel mixing plaster with a vacumm mixer…

Precious Metal Clay with Carl Stanley Part #2 Left – Is a picture of a PMC pin that Carl made while he was giving the demonstration. Note: The stone is a piece of red CZ and was put into the piece of jewelry and fired. Heat does not bother…

Precious Metal Clay with Carl Stanley To be honest I was not that interested in Precious Metal Clay before I saw this demonstration. It was very informative and I can see a lot of unique applications for it (now)… Precious Metal Clay is just…

Mokume-Gane Metal Techniques with James Binnion Of all the demonstrations this is the one I wanted to see. I have always been fascinated by this metal working process. This is a very old technique of fusing various different metals together…

One of the major reasons for attending Kraftwerks is to learn what is new in the industry. This year was no different… Milling Platinum Sterling (925) – A New Alloy This year at Kraftwerks the refiners of a brand new alloy were there to…

One of the major reasons for attending Kraftwerks is to learn what is new in the industry. This year was no different… Casting Platinum Sterling (925) – A New Alloy This year at Kraftwerks (2004) the refiners of a brand new alloy were there to…