Skip to main content

Turning My 9ct Gold Scrap Into A Pair Of Earrings


For someone who's loved silver forever I seem to have an awful lot of scrap 9ct gold! Some of it is from gold chains and a ring I had when I was younger and some of it I was given by my Mum as she wasn't a big gold jewellery person either. She preferred wearing my early bead creations bless her!


There's also a couple of scrap pebbles from previous projects.
I started by melting it into as large a pebble as I could manage with my torch.




I ended up with a slightly saggy looking black lump. As I thought gold wasn't supposed to oxidize I decided to look up exactly what 9ct gold contains and found out it's made up of 37.5% pure gold and the rest is made up of silver, copper and zinc. That's explains the oxidation........


This is the 9ct gold after pickling - still a bit grubby and you can see some of the copper on the surface.
I then ran it through the rolling mill, annealing several times as I did so.


This is the result. It started to split on one edge and the copper content is very evident from the annealing before it was pickled.


I chose this design to imprint onto the gold as it fit the size of the sheet the best.


The patterned gold after pickling. I think the copper is drawn to the surface of the gold during annealing but I wasn't too worried about it as I have the means to remove it with...........
"SUPER PICKLE" !!


Super pickle is a 50/50 mix of clean pickle and hydrogen peroxide and is fabulous for removing copper from where it shouldn't be.


As you can see the super pickle did it's job.


After tidying the edges of the two gold pieces I added a satin texture to two pieces of silver sheet and soldered the gold pieces onto them.



I wasn't sure what I was going to do with the earrings yet so I used fairly large pieces of silver sheet.
Then I started trimming them...


I still didn't know what I was going to do at the top of the earrings so left it a bit longer.
Then I decided to trim that off too.............:D


 And add a jump ring for the earwire. 
{I think my design mojo had nipped out that day}


I soaked the earrings in the super pickle again to remove the copper that had appeared on the surface from soldering then added sterling silver earwires.

After tumbling the earrings to clean them up and polish them I decided to oxidize them in liver of sulphur to add a bit of depth around the join where the gold part meets the silver and also because I like the contrast of oxidized silver with the shiny gold.

I cleaned them up with wire wool and tumbled them again and here they are all finished...


I really enjoyed making something different and as I have some scrap 9ct gold left will most likely be making something else of the golden persuasion soon.





Copyright © 2016 Cinnamon Jewellery. All rights reserved.
Labels:

Comments

  1. letFriday, September 23, 2016

    WOW!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Divya NFriday, September 23, 2016

    The earrings are really gorgeous. Owing to the difference in my exposure to gold jewelry I first found the concept of melting and rolling it horrifying. But after seeing the textured piece (it resembles ancient coins) and the final earrings, I now wish that they are more options available like this in the market

    ReplyDelete
  3. Miss Val's CreationsFriday, September 23, 2016

    Great idea! It must have been fun melting down the old pieces. The new earrings are beauties.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Kalaya SteedeFriday, September 23, 2016

    Those are fabulous Tracy! I love the way gold looks with oxidized silver and you do a great job with your picture taking. Bravo! <3

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cinnamon JewellerySunday, September 25, 2016

      Thanks Kalaya. I am improving with my one-handed photo taking :D

      Delete
  5. lynn bowesSunday, September 25, 2016

    Oh wow. Those are so sweet! Understand the design mojo thing but letting the design just work itself out was a great way to go :: lynn

    ReplyDelete
  6. Silver Moss JewelleryFriday, October 07, 2016

    These are extraordinarily beautiful, just wonderful. And I love how they were created from scrap and so organically too - I'd have been too nervous at getting it wrong (with gold!) to make it up as I went but your approach worked a treat with these.
    One question - did you imprint the design using your rolling mill?
    Thanks for all the great photos and the descriptions - you made it look easy and I'm sure it wasn't!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Jane ElizabethMonday, October 24, 2016

    What an incredible end result – these earrings are stunning! It’s great that you saw the potential for your scrap 9ct gold to be reused and turned into a masterpiece like this. Often we discard old jewellery odds and ends, when they can often be redesigned into modern and beautiful pieces like this. Your combination of the gold and silver is perfect and has become a very modern design.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cinnamon JewelleryTuesday, October 25, 2016

      Thank you! Having a rolling mill is very useful for recyclng scraps :D

      Delete

Post a Comment

Your comments and questions are very welcome!
If you would prefer to contact me directly please use the contact form on my "get in touch" page.

Popular posts from this blog

Combining Soldering And Enamel

The need to make cute, brightly coloured enamel studs propelled me into the world of combining soldering with enamel a couple of years ago. I knew from reading up on it that it was possible to enamel and solder on the same piece but wasn't too confident I was able to do it back then. It was a slightly embarrassing occurance that made me just get on with - I'd made some enamel studs with glued on stud posts. I'd used 2 part epoxy resin which was a job in itself as it set hard after 5 minutes so I had to keep mixing more up. The finished studs looked ok but that little voice in my head kept asking "are you sure you want to use glue?" I wasn't but didn't think I had any other way to do it so I used glue. I sold my first pair and merrily sent them on their way to Canada. A couple of week later the buyer got in touch to say the stud post had come off one of the earrings and the other was hanging off. I was mortified, apologized profusely and refunded her m
32 comments
Read more

Torch Enamelling - What I've been Up To Recently!

I've admired enamelled jewellery for a while now and not too long ago did a blog post about Etsy seller tekaandzoe  and her wonderful kiln enamelled creations. I didn't think at the time that it was something I would ever be able to do as the cost of kilns plus lack of space would be a problem for me. That wasn't until I saw an advert for a torch enamelling tutorial from US jewellery supplies website Beaducation  by Steven James . It's a great tutorial showing the basics on how to torch enamel on copper. Of course I bought it! I then spent hours scouring the internet for more information on torch enamelling, where to buy the tools I'd need and of course the enamel powders. There are quite a few UK sites selling enamelling supplies and tools but as usual I found the US sites had more choice (why do we always lag behind?) I bought some enamel powders from a couple of UK sites to begin with - Cookson Gold have a good selection but bear in mind the leaded enamels ha
37 comments
Read more

Etching Silver Using Nail Art Stamps

So my love/hate relationship with etching sterling silver continues. I've tried a few times now and always end up with different results most of them not that great to be honest. I've tried connecting the silver and a piece of copper to a 9v battery and also heating the ferric nitrate. Sometimes the results are good sometimes not so good. I currently have an etched piece of silver sheet waiting to be reticulated and rid it of the mess that is the etched "pattern".  I now know that using stamps and Stayz On ink just doesn't work with silver - the time needed to etch using ferric nitrate is much longer than etching copper and the ink starts to wear away after about an hour. This results in the pattern being patchy as the resist is eaten away and the silver ends up quite lumpy and course looking. I have yet to try using pnp paper. I don't know why but it all seems a bit of a faff to do. I don't have a laser printer so would need to find somewhere or
34 comments
Read more