[Jewelry making - Article 00744] - Re: [Orchid] Milling your own or buying stock

[David Phelps]

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    I buy almost all of my stock. I taught myself many years ago to cast
    ingots and roll and draw them out, but found it to be somewhat less
    than profitable. I would spend an hour to save $10. I also would
    occasionally have to deal with a bit of splitting and cracking.
    Nothing more frustrating than to spend half an hour picking through
    scrap, weighing alloy and gold, casting the ingot, rolling it,
    annealing, rolling, annealing, rolling, annealing and finding out I
    got carried away and went through the mill once too often. Ooops!
    Or, go through the same process, and then fabricate my piece only to
    find during final polish that it is filled with tiny cracks. # AT %*! 

    Why put yourself through this when you can pick up the phone and get
    a perfectly flat piece of sheet exactly the right thickness with a
    mirror finish by 9:00 o'clock next morning and pay $20 over spot for
    it. OK, I do keep a piece of 12 gauge sheet and a piece of 4 by 4
    square stock around in both karats and colors and in platinum so I
    can roll out anything special I might need, and a couple of pieces
    of 14 gauge round to draw down if I need to, but the days of casting
    and rolling scrap to save a nickel are over. 

    This being said, sometimes I just feel the need to fire up the torch
    and melt something. There is something cathartic about the process,
    and I will never quite be able to stop doing it. Maybe it takes me
    back to the days of being an apprentice when learning was the
    objective, as opposed to making a living. Maybe it's even more
    primal than that. Earth, wind, fire and water, you know what I mean.
    There's just something about turning a bunch of nondescript lumps of
    metal into a straight piece of tubing and a length of wire and making
    a beautiful, shiny frictionless hinge out of it. Oh, I do love it so.
    
Dave
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