How Gold is Made into Jewelry

The gold used in jewelry contains alloys. Various karat weights, including 10k, 14k, 18k and 22k, contain part zinc, copper, silver, or palladium. 18K gold is 750 percent pure, with 250 alloys added. Professional jewelers can always tell real gold from fools gold, or fake gold. They have special ways of testing the gold, from adding chemical agents to gauge a reaction, to other special tests. Most jewelers will melt their own scrap gold, or process gold bullion into jewelry.

Store bought gold is always strengthened with other metal alloys, which depending on the amount added, determines the carat weight and purity of the gold. Pure gold is 24 carat or 24k, and is alloyed with other base metals, to enable melting and pliability for making the gold into jewelry.

Gold is a profitable metal for jewelers to use for resale, because as little as an ounce of gold can be stretched and made pliable to make multiple necklaces. Gold is melted down with the use of a hand-held blow torch, or kiln type oven, and once pliable, put into a special necklace mold, where it hardens.

People don't have to be a professional to make their own gold jewelry, though adding other metals to give the jewelry various colors may be tricky. Copper gives gold a reddish color; palladium or nickel gives white gold its color. To make homemade jewelry, the easiest thing to do is collect scrap pieces of broken gold jewelry. The jewelry can be melted in a safe place away from flammables, with the use of a hand-held, low oxygen torch. The gold is then melted by bringing the torch flame back and forth quickly over a melting container made for holding liquid gold. Once the gold is melted, it can then be poured into a mold. Once the gold is hardened into solid form, the jewelry is removed from the mold, and then scraped and polished.

If making your own gold jewelry, it is a good idea to first study the technique, and take a class on how to do this taught by a professional. Always wear safety goggles, and never handle a torch if you don't know how to use it properly. Read books on how to make gold jewelry, and look online at various websites, such as Youtube, which instruct beginning jewelry makers on the art of the craft. If you have no gold scrap jewelry, old gold coins can be melted or anything else, as long as the chemical composition of the gold is pliable enough to be melted. A kiln oven may be required for big chucks of gold, and should be melted by a professional if the gold needs chemical treatment as it is being melted.