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Old 07-14-2005, 11:22 PM
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mgdesigns mgdesigns is offline
Steel Addict
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Franklin, TN
Posts: 146
Well guys, thanks for all of the leads. I'll probably stick with H&S as I use them most often for refining of sweeps and filings, as well as casting drops. I'll just have them put the next refining on account to be used for different wires.

Has anyone ever used some of the peach or rose or green golds for inlays? I think that they would add a lot of zing. They also could be obtained in 18K or 22K, I believe, and should be interesting for a change of color. Just a thought.

As for casting out 24K into ingots; I could do that, but right now I do not have any casting grain on hand in pure gold. I've usually steer away from that type of refining and smelting for my castings because that is pretty critical metallurgical stuff, and wrong mixes can mess up an otherwise great casting. Even full time professional casters occasional have melt problems by using pure, and then adding alloys to cook down to appropriate karatage. I had a 14KW casting done at Christmas by a pro, and he called me 2 days later to inform me that the batch of gold he'd mixed apparently did not blend properly, and hard spots were turning up in other castings from the same batch. But perhaps I'll have H&S send me some 24K casting grain so I can try my hand at it. The last place I worked as a bench jeweler, I had to regularly make ingots and roll them out for sizing stock, or to pull wire. White gold is the worst!! It gets so hard so fast, and requires twice as much annealing to make it a workable commodity. Pulling wire is a hidden talent many bench jewelers do not learn anymore. It's very cost effective when you need a size now.

Thanks for now.

Mark in Nashville, TN
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