Swirsky Designs

Everybody has old pieces in their jewelery box that they do not wear. With the current price of gold of course it seems that the obvious thing seems to be to reuse the gold you already own in creating a new piece. As a goldsmith I hear the question a lot. Although I understand the desire, for the most part it is not a worthwhile endeavor. Melting down old gold in order to save money is not a realistic plan. Along with the fact it rarely ends up saving money, it almost always leads to unstable jewelery.

But why?

Gold already made into jewelery generally contains solder as well as other impurities it has picked up along the way. Re-melting it not only brings down the karat value of the gold (as solder adds to the impurities), but those metals that were used to alloy the gold in the first place most often become brittle and in many cases pitted. The resulting product is not good quality gold and will not stand up well to years of use.

If you want to reuse the gold in your piece, the best idea is to have it refined down to pure 24 karat gold and then re-alloyed into new gold in the karat of your choosing. It is almost never a cost effective strategy, and almost never done by small business jewelery artists.

On the other hand, if you wish to reuse it for sentimental reasons, there is room to play around a little bit. While you can go through the expense of having your gold sent out for refining, another idea might be to have the piece altered to create something more to your taste. Additions can be made, designs pierced into solid metal, stones changed out, and even pieces of the piece removed copletely for use in new ways.

Talk to a good jewelery artist before making any final decisions. You never know what you might be able to come up with.