[Jewelry making - Article 00954] - [Orchid] Questions about Gold Fabrication

[Laura Wiesler]

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    Hi Folks -- Have some general questions about gold fabrication & I
    know there are great resources out there in this group!!  I have
    worked some in the past with gold, but my experience has been either
    using it together with silver or pieces where the work is fairly
    straightforward & mostly limited to soldering findings, bezels, etc.
    I have just finished a gold pendant in repousse, which was much more
    work than I've ever done in gold before & I had some results which I
    have questions about. 

    First off, the piece is in 14K, which is what I had on hand  (about 
    1.25" X  1.25" and 24 ga.)  I expect that future repousse work in
    gold will be either in 18K or 22K.  After chasing the front and then
    repousseing from the back, the piece was completely annealed and
    then worked again on the front.  After that, I soldered a post for
    mounting a pearl in the front and bail on the back.  After pickling
    and cleaning, I polished it, mounted the pearl, admired it greatly
    <G> and then put it on a chain and wore it outside -- only then
    realizing how "pink" it was!!  Further the copper was just a "rosy
    glow", so to speak -- not looking spotty like firescale would in
    sterling. 

    I am assuming that this is copper which has come to the surface in
    the annealing process and that I simply did not pickle it enough. 
    Is this a correct assumption?  Or should there have been more to the
    clean up than I expected?  Do I need to have a separate pickle for
    gold from my other metals (primarily silver and sterling, with some
    copper).  Is there something in the annealing stage that I need to
    do differently from annealing silver or sterling?  Can I assume that
    at a higher karat, that I will run less risk of this "pinking" of my
    gold, as there will be less copper content in the alloy? 

    Any thoughts on this topic will be greatly appreciated!!  Thank you
    all so much!! 

Laura Wiesler
StoneHouse Studio

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