oldbadger
Skanky Old Mongrel!
Casting a gold ring, and electro-plating silver rings.
I got better at casting silver rings and eventually my first attempts went back in to the melting crucible! But Valentine's day was coming along and so I gave up my only gold ring to the fire and produced a gold ring for my wife, the mold having been made from a walnut wedding ring which I had made for our wooden anniversary long ago. I also made a silver ring using the same walnut ring, and the three rings were presented on the day with roses and card etc.
(We're kind of soppy)
She liked them and suggested that I make silver and a gold copies of my own walnut wedding band, but I only had a tiny amount of gold left, so she turned through her jewelry boxes and gave me enough gold to make a gold ring for myself. Gold melts at 100.C higher temperature than silver and it seems to be less volatile than silver in its molten state, possible because I only have a propane torch, and a lot more gold is needed than 'just enough' so that it pushes itself right through the mold before setting. And so after casting a ring for myself there was an extra 9 grams of 14ct gold left over, as you can see from the photos. That little lump of metal is worth £200 this morning, the highest price for 14 carat gold that I can ever remember. I don't want to use such expensive metal for a fun hobby, but did want to find a good use for that little lump.
Electro-plating! The trouble with EP is that it is more complex than I really want to get in to! A search of U-tube 'how-to' vids showed just how complex EP can be, and I already knew from my security-consultant days that commercial EP plants use masses and masses of cyanide crystals. Masses of cyanide! I once visited an EP plant in West London which was sited right beside a reservoir. There were huge bags of cyanide crystals just laying around in an open room with only 4mm glass in its unsecured windows, and I often wondered about that mass of poison laying around by a blooming reservoir......... the mind of a security consultant, I'm afraid. But that was 35 years ago, and since then I've found that nobody gives a hoot about any risks until they've been found out, and then the 'lessons to be learned' BS gets sent around. Hey! I'n retired! Back to super-simple Electro-plating!
I decided to ignore all U-tube lessons and just do it the 'Oldbadger' way. Gold plating for idiots. I purchased a bottle of clear vinegar from the local supermarket @ .55 pence, a neighbour electrician gave me some earthing cable which provided the copper electrodes, I already had a spare silver ring and a lump of gold. And three AA nickel-Metal-Hydride batteries would supply 3.6 volts. That was that....
I connected my gold lump to the positive battery terminal and hung it in the vinegar acid, I connected the silver ring hanging from a copper wire to the negative terminal and placed that in the vinegar, turned on the currect and went to bed. This morning I discovered that I had a rose-gold couloured ring as the result, this is possibly because some copper combined with the gold in the plating process. I like rose gold.
Now, can anybody tell me whether this ring will keep it's lovely plating, or how I might need to 'fix' it, etc? For all I know it will have turned blue by this afternoon!
Pics follow:-
Finally, our collection of white-metal cockles, mussels and clams! The gold ones are simply that real shells that I used, painted gold!
I got better at casting silver rings and eventually my first attempts went back in to the melting crucible! But Valentine's day was coming along and so I gave up my only gold ring to the fire and produced a gold ring for my wife, the mold having been made from a walnut wedding ring which I had made for our wooden anniversary long ago. I also made a silver ring using the same walnut ring, and the three rings were presented on the day with roses and card etc.
(We're kind of soppy)She liked them and suggested that I make silver and a gold copies of my own walnut wedding band, but I only had a tiny amount of gold left, so she turned through her jewelry boxes and gave me enough gold to make a gold ring for myself. Gold melts at 100.C higher temperature than silver and it seems to be less volatile than silver in its molten state, possible because I only have a propane torch, and a lot more gold is needed than 'just enough' so that it pushes itself right through the mold before setting. And so after casting a ring for myself there was an extra 9 grams of 14ct gold left over, as you can see from the photos. That little lump of metal is worth £200 this morning, the highest price for 14 carat gold that I can ever remember. I don't want to use such expensive metal for a fun hobby, but did want to find a good use for that little lump.
Electro-plating! The trouble with EP is that it is more complex than I really want to get in to! A search of U-tube 'how-to' vids showed just how complex EP can be, and I already knew from my security-consultant days that commercial EP plants use masses and masses of cyanide crystals. Masses of cyanide! I once visited an EP plant in West London which was sited right beside a reservoir. There were huge bags of cyanide crystals just laying around in an open room with only 4mm glass in its unsecured windows, and I often wondered about that mass of poison laying around by a blooming reservoir......... the mind of a security consultant, I'm afraid. But that was 35 years ago, and since then I've found that nobody gives a hoot about any risks until they've been found out, and then the 'lessons to be learned' BS gets sent around. Hey! I'n retired! Back to super-simple Electro-plating!
I decided to ignore all U-tube lessons and just do it the 'Oldbadger' way. Gold plating for idiots. I purchased a bottle of clear vinegar from the local supermarket @ .55 pence, a neighbour electrician gave me some earthing cable which provided the copper electrodes, I already had a spare silver ring and a lump of gold. And three AA nickel-Metal-Hydride batteries would supply 3.6 volts. That was that....
I connected my gold lump to the positive battery terminal and hung it in the vinegar acid, I connected the silver ring hanging from a copper wire to the negative terminal and placed that in the vinegar, turned on the currect and went to bed. This morning I discovered that I had a rose-gold couloured ring as the result, this is possibly because some copper combined with the gold in the plating process. I like rose gold.
Now, can anybody tell me whether this ring will keep it's lovely plating, or how I might need to 'fix' it, etc? For all I know it will have turned blue by this afternoon!
Pics follow:-
Finally, our collection of white-metal cockles, mussels and clams! The gold ones are simply that real shells that I used, painted gold!
