Jewellery Remodelling

Jewellery Workshop |  Jewellery Remodelling

Remodelling Gold Bangle In these hard economic times, and ever increasing gold prices we can modify your existing gold jewellery in to a brand new piece for a relatively low fee. In fact we only charge for labour as you have supplied the gold. One of our most popular designs is a solid bangle which currently costs £130 to manufacture, but can have a value in excess of £1500 (based on 30gram bangle)

Your Scrap Gold First we sort your unwanted or scrap gold to ensure that all items are gold and are suitable to be melted down. Many components such as clasps and hollow bangles can have metal springs inside the jewellery, and it is important that all non usable material is removed at this stage. All removed items are returned back to you in order to show where any weight was lost.

Melting Your Gold We now need to turn your gold into a form that we are able to work with. We do this by melting the gold in a crucible until the gold is molten and flowing nicely. We may need to repeat this step a few times whilst any debris inside hollow jewellery has fully burnt out. Once we have the molten gold flowing nicely and all debris burnt out we can then pour the molten gold into a skillet to form a gold bar.

Gold Bar We now have a resulting gold bar from your unwanted gold jewellery in the form that we can now work with. Then we need to clean the gold bar up of any sharp edges or minor non uniform parts and any crystallised flux used in the melting process. Once the gold bar is cleaned up we are ready to start making the bangle.

Milling The Gold Bar One of the most important pieces of equipment for making jewellery in any workshop is "the rolling mills". Using the rolling mills we can work the gold bar by keep passing through the gold bar whilst turning the rolling mills. Similar to an old fashioned mangle we gently wind the handle, which in turn thins the gold bar in width and height, whilst making it longer. We will repeat this step until we arrive at our desired dimensions for the gold bar. This process hardens the gold bar, so we have to anneal the gold bar on a regular basis in order to maintain malleability.

Annealing the Gold After working the gold bar with the rolling mills, we have to anneal the gold in order to soften the gold, so that we can continue to work the gold. Over working the gold can cause to the gold cracking during manufacture, or at a later date in wear. We have to gently heat the gold until cherry red in colour, and maintain this colour for around 30 seconds, this temperature is also close to melting point so it is very important to get this stage correct or we will be starting again.

Cooling Down Once annealed, we now have to allow the gold to cool down to room temperature. Doing this too quickly by quenching in water can also have a detrimental affect on the gold, this however only takes a few minutes. Once the gold is of a temperature that is unlikely to burn, but is uncomfortable to hold, we can now quench in water prior to reworking again.

Making Gold Wire We now turn the gold bar into gold wire by pulling through a series of ever decreasing holes, these work just like the rolling mills decreasing the size of the wire whilst lengthening the gold wire. We continue to pull the gold wire down until we obtain the desired diameter. We still have to anneal the gold, but as this becomes longer and thinner it becomes more difficult to do.

Annealing Gold Wire As the gold wire becomes longer and thinner, it is now pliable enough to manoeuvre easily allowing us to coil the gold wire to make the annealing process easier. We continue to work the gold wire until we reach our desired length, a length that was determined prior to melting gold based upon calculations that we made, in order to get the desired twist, and bracelet length.

Preparing the Wire Now we have the gold wire to our desired length, we cut the gold wire into 3 equal lengths as we are making a 3 row twisted bangle, but this could easily be a different amount depending on the design commissioned. We again anneal the 3 lengths of gold wire which is now easier than annealing one long length. In addition each length is straightened to make it as straight as we can to get the gold wire.

Preparing to Twist The 3 separate rows are now aligned next to each other and held together with twisted steel binding wire. The gold wire is soldered solid at one end and inserted into our twisting machine. We then uniformly twist the wire along the entire length until we obtain the twist that we require. If the gold wire has not been annealed correctly in previous stages, then there will be localised soft and hard areas resulting in an uneven twist.

Shaping the Bangle With the wire now twisted and the steel binding wire removed, we now shape the profile of the bangle in the rolling mills. Once we have the desired profile we now bend the length of twisted gold wire to the shape of a bangle, and adjust the size to fit. We then solder each end of the bangle to secure the ends of the wires to stop them coming apart in wear.

Polishing the Bangle Now the bangle is made, and to size, it is still in a blackened state and needs to be polished to a high polished finish on a polishing machine. We now polish the bangle both inside and out with several different polishing mops and compounds to obtain a high polished finish to the bangle, we can also finish with a textured satin finish, if desired.

Finished Bangle The finished product is a bangle weighing 30 grams and worth in excess of £1500, and costs only £130 to make. You may even offset this price with us, purchasing any leftover gold from the remodelling. The bangle is completely solid, with no moving parts and substantial enough to last a lifetime. This is just one item that we can make from your own gold, and we can make items to your own design.

Jewellery Workshop |  Jewellery Remodelling

Jewellery Remodelling - How to turn your old unwanted scrap jewellery into a new Gold Bangle.

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