Jewelry Metals

Learn the meaning of the trade terms for gold weight and karat, so you can calculate the gold content value of any jewelry item as well as the gold markup.…

How can you determine the gold karatage of an item and learn if it’s gold-filled or plated? This simple technique will do the trick.

For jewelry use, silver is often mixed with other metals. Learn how silver content varies between alloys and how to test an item’s silver purity.…

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…

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.

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…

The basics of pewter as a precious metal.

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.…