Jewelry Made To Order

How is Opal mined?

2007-03-15T22:25:00.000-07:00

How is Opal mined?

Let’s start by talking about how opal was mined in the late nineteenth century when it all began in Australia.

As opal is not found on the surface, or very rarely, the miner had to dig underground. Opal is found in what is called “opal dirt.” This opal dirt is mostly found under a layer of very hard sandstone.

The first miners simply used picks and shovels. They dug a hole big enough to crawl into and then they kept digging this down until they reached the opal dirt. This hole was called the mine shaft. This could be anywhere from a few metres to twenty metres or more.

Once the level had been found then they would dig horizontally in layers big enough to crawl through. These were called “drives.”

The spoil, or useless material, had to be taken out of the mine so that the miner could move around. So they set up what was called a windlass. This allowed the miner or someone at the top of the mine to turn a handle and bring a bucket to the surface.

For light the miner often simply used a candle. Well, as you can imagine a miner working alone would not get very much done in a day.

What happens today is often not too far removed from those early days. Some hobby miners still use picks and shovels as well as small jackhammers. They use a hoist which takes the bucket of spoil to the surface. A lone miner still cannot do a great deal in a day by himself. It is hard physical work and if a miner works month after month he might not find a single piece of opal worth selling.

The next level of mining is the serious miner. He uses a diesel powered digging machine. Similar to the type of excavation machines used above ground only a bit more compact and specially made for the mining process. To remove the spoil from the mine he will have a machine called a “blower” which actually sucks the spoil up through a pipe to the top of the mine and deposits it into a tip truck which then takes it to a dump site.

This kind of set up will cost $100,000 or more. This is generally used by the serious full time miner hoping to make a living from opal mining.

Then there is the very serious opal miner who uses heavy earth moving machinery such as you find on a construction site and carries out what is called “open cut” mining. This is where a total mine lease of fifty square metres and perhaps twenty metres deep is removed, checked for opal deposits, and then filled back in and rehabilitated.

Why is opal not mined on a huge scale like coal mining is? The answer is because opal is hard to find and almost impossible to predict where it will be found. Entire open cut mining ventures may turn up not a single opal and conversely the lone miner with a pick and shovel might find a million dollars worth in a single morning’s work.

To sink large sums of money in such a haphazard and risky venture is not considered a worthwhile investment for shareholders’ funds so opal mining is left to the adventurous seekers of fortunes who are willing to risk a lot and work hard. Something to think about when admiring your lovely opal jewelry.

Name Necklace. What to Look for When Ordering One

2007-03-14T02:56:00.000-07:00

Name necklaces or name pendants as they are also called have been around for at lest forty years that I can remember. The pendants that I saw before my apprenticeship began were mostly worn by very young girls not even teenagers. They were always plated gold and tended to look a little worn as the girls must have liked wearing them often.

They became popular for a good while in the eighties with teenagers and then disappeared for a long period. The huge success of Sex in the City sparked a monstrous comeback for name necklaces of all sorts. I get people asking me every week for a name pendant just like Carrie. Today we are seeing movie stars and television personalities reading the news wearing them.

I resisted many requests to make them until a young single mother of two hounded me for about a month to make them for her sisters.

I make them almost everyday now and they are handmade and very time consuming but the rewards are not just financial as girls and ladies send me emails telling me how much they love them.

If you are getting one made make sure that you ask if it is real gold or gold plated. Gold plating will often wear off as it reacts to acids in the skin and as these pendants are worn high up and touching the skin all the time they are susceptible to this reaction. I make some items which are gold plated but I give a 5 year guarantee with it and the plating is deep. It almost never gets an acid reaction. So be sure to ask about that and guarantees.

The next thing to look for is the thickness of the metal. I use gold plate 1.4mm thick to cut the pendants from. In silver I even use a thicker plate than that as silver is much softer than gold. Now, I see many advertisements for pendants where the thickness is not specified. If you see them ask how thick they are. I see many which are 0.4mm and 0.7mm thick.

This minor thickness has two problems associated with it: firstly, it is just too thin and will bend easily, and secondly, being as thin as a piece of paper means that it lacks dimension. It probably takes me about 40 minutes to hand polish the edges of these pendants and because of that and the thickness of these edges it has a lovely depth to it so that it shines when you look at it from any direction.

The last thing to look at is how the chain is attached to the pendant. I use small rings and I solder the gaps in these rings so that it can never come apart. The quicker way to do this is just to close the gap but it may come apart with a bit of wear. I make them with diamonds, rubies and sapphires.

Opals – Can You Fall in Love with Them.

2006-09-14T17:28:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I met an Australian Jeweller in the lift of a specialist jewellery building in Sydney. He asked me what kind of jewellery work I did and I told him that I specialized in opal.

For the last fifteen years he had been making special one off hand pieces for his private customers. In all that time he had never made a piece with opals and asked me how I came to be doing that and more importantly why.

I explained to him that every single opal is different to any other and that was extremely significant. When either of us as jewellers go looking for rubies or sapphires for instance to set in a pendant or ring we spend a good deal of time looking at each stone under magnification so that we can get two or three stones that we need for the piece which are going to be exactly the same in colour and intensity. But that is definitely not the case with opal.

As all opal is unique we are looking for the opposite. We are looking for those individual qualities which set it apart from any other stone. We are looking for that blast of vibrant colour or that intricate pattern or that mass of different colours arranged in their unique form.

I explained to him that as all opal is different and that it comes in several types from different parts of Australia then you must develop a special knowledge to really understand it. Then as a cutter and polisher of these stones I have gained years and years of knowledge of opal’s intricacies from such intimate work with it.

Imagine if you sat down at a bench for a few years and stared intensely with magnified lenses at a particular type of stone and every day you spent hours making decisions as to how to get the very best out of a handful of stones and then spent days cutting them. Well you would develop some expertise with these stones would you not? I asked him how many hours has he spent staring at a single citrine or one single emerald?

Opal is a stone you can fall in love with. I asked him if he could fall in love with other types. Could he fall in love with amethysts or rubies? The answer was no as they are stones which basically all look alike and have no qualities which make you want to examine them for hours on end.

That’s why I love working with opals and making opal jewellery. I love the stone and have a real passion to make a piece of jewelry for this very gemstone that I am working with.

When I make a ring for a ruby the customer might supply a two carat round ruby and I measure the stone from every angle and then I put it aside and I make the piece from gold. I never look at the stone again and I don’t even think about it. When I finish working on the metal then I pick up the ruby and set it into the piece.
But when I make a ring for an opal my whole focus is trying to get the very best from the opal. The stone is never out of site while I am making the metal part. I am constantly picking it up and seeing where it will sit in the piece to make sure that I am not missing something. I keep muttering things like: “My God, this is going to look fantastic!” You could not do that if you did not love the stones.

The White Metals used in Jewellery Making

2006-09-07T00:32:00.000-07:00

As an escape from jewellery made with yellow gold we often look for other coloured metals. There is of course rose or pink gold, green gold and green gold as well as some other varieties. However, the traditional other color which has been and still is highly popular is white or silver. Silver is a great color but some people want to see more glitter and silver has that awful negative aspect of tarnishing.

So what are the choices of white? We have silver, white gold, platinum and palladium. These are our major choices today.

Let’s look at Platinum first. It commands the highest price because it is more precious than gold. It is out of most people’s budget today. But is has some wonderful qualities. It can get a fantastic high polish and is a very tough, scratch resistant and tarnish free metal. It can be combined with yellow gold to make a two tone item. In the 18th century Louis the fifteenth considered it the metal fit for a king. South American natives called it Platina or little silver and thought of it as an impurity in their silver. Today it is still on the top of the tree for white jewelry.

Then there is white gold itself. What is white gold? It is an alloy of more than one metal. It starts off as yellow gold as we know gold, and then we mix in bits of other whiter metals until the whole thing turns into a white alloy which we call white gold. White gold looks great and can be combined with yellow gold to make very attractive combinations. It has a downside in that the yellow gold wants to show through. We have a solution for this: we plate the item with another expensive white metal called Rhodium.

Next comes Palladium which is one of the platinum group of metals. It has been used as a jewelry metal since 1939 and is becoming very popular now as gold is becoming so expensive. Why do I think this metal is on the rise? Think about it this way: it is lighter, stronger, cheaper, brighter and more attractive than 18 carat white gold.

Finally let’s come back to Silver. Silver is a cheap precious metal. It is easy to work with and freely available. It is a good alternative to more expensive gold. The disadvantage of silver is that it tarnishes. Well there are two ways around that. The first is common practice and is the same treatment that is used for white gold: we plate it with Rhodium. But today there is an even better alternative. A clever Australian jewellery from Victoria has made an alloy of silver which is still called Sterling Silver which almost does not tarnish. It costs a tiny bit more than normal silver which tarnishes.

My pick of the top end is Palladium and for the bottom end is tarnish resistant silver.

Precious Opal and Common Opal

2006-09-01T22:10:00.000-07:00

Opal is made from Silica and water. It is a non crystalline material. Opals are found in several countries around the world. I frequently get people from Russia and Africa wanting to sell me very large quantities of opal but the opal they want to sell me is one color and has very little appeal to me as we can get poor colored opal every day of the week in the Lightning Ridge area of NSW in Australia. We call it potch and it is what is termed common opal. Common opal has no color variation. It may be a dull looking blue or green or gray or white but it has no play of color.

Precious opal is what everyone is searching for. Precious opal has a play of color. Sometimes we call it fire. When you turn a piece of cut and polished opal around in your hand the play of color will be evident. As you move it around the colors change and will go from bright flashes of one color to different looking blasts of other colors.

It was formed mostly in regions which were inland waterways millions of years ago. As these areas weathered silica seeped into groundwater and gradually settled into dried out spheres which cannot be defined even with an ordinary microscope.

Precious opal will be different from one piece to the next. It is rare to find it possible to cut matching pieces from one chunk of opal stone. I have cut many large pieces and couldn’t find two small pieces that I could match into a pair of earrings. That is the beauty of precious opal it is not common and no two pieces are likely to be the same.

Precious opal can be found in many parts of the world but Australia provides about 95 percent of all precious opal mined. It is mined in many parts of Australia but the two types that are recognized as being the best are black opal and white opal. There are sub types of these two such as crystal. Boulder opal is also recognized as precious opal.

It is precious opal which makes the best opal jewelry. Common opal is still useful for making beads and ornaments and low priced jewelry. Precious opal is often just bought by collectors and stored away as pieces for investment and pleasure.

The Jewellers’ Association of Australia’s Annual Fair Sydney 2006 – What’s Hot Around the World?

2006-08-26T18:16:00.000-07:00

Thousands of visitors from the Australian jewellery trade, retailers, manufacturers, bench jewellers, goldsmiths, silversmiths attended the annual fair to see the latest products on show from hundreds of exhibitors from all over the world.

There is nothing new under the sun. Well perhaps there isn’t but there certainly can be new twists put on old themes and that is certainly evident in the jewellery fashion world.

The world economies are changing and China is playing a big part in jewellery manufacture and China equals cheap. In Australia sales have been dampened by rising fuel prices, rising interest rates and massively rising gold and silver prices. But it doesn’t mean that people have stopped buying jewellery.

As a response to these negative economic conditions new metals are looming as the popular choice. We are seeing titanium, tungsten, and stainless steel taking over some of the role of the precious metals gold and silver. These are exciting metals and a lot can be done with them that might not be done with other metals. Also, white gold is the most expensive of the gold varieties and with a huge surge in the gold price what can we do? Well palladium is the answer. It is a beautiful metal and is strong and a sparkling white. It doesn’t need to be rhodium plated and in my opinion it looks better than white gold or platinum and it is less expensive.

Big is the word of today. We are seeing huge mens’ watches. At first I have to laugh but then they grow on you. Of course you don’t have to agree with the fashions you just have to keep up with them!

Beads and all things beaded and big beads are popular. Well, that’s been happening for a while but it doesn’t show any signs of waning. Bright coloured beaded jewellery is looming large. The best part about beaded jewellery is that it is cheap. You can buy a lot of it for very little and you can even make it yourself. Beaded gemstone jewellery is raging. I like because you get beads like garnets, pearls, opalite, and so on all very inexpensively. They are the poorer quality pieces of the mining process but what a terrific way to use them.

Diamonds are still in flavour which is evidenced by the fact that one and a half million dollars worth were stolen from one exhibitor as his wears were being transported to the fair. Diamonds are coming in all colours now and this is making a resurgence in the desire for the timeless stone.

Other gemstones are being set in invisible settings and this is becoming very popular. All that glittering metal which traditionally holds the stones in place is cleverly being replaced by another form of setting which makes the setting method invisible. I like it.

Silver jewellery is surging as a response to the increased cost of white gold but it always had its loyal followers in any case.

I am pleased to see that amber and amber jewellery from the far Baltic shores is still very popular.

All in all, my view of what I have seen and talked about shows that all the old favourites like opals are still holding their ground but big, bright, glitzy jewellery is on the rise!

My Gold Jewellery – Is it worth more Today?

2006-08-24T12:54:00.000-07:00

As I write gold is worth about $630 US an ounce. Since August 2005 the price of gold has risen from $447 US which represents a whopping 43% increase.

So yes, your jewellery must be worth a little more if it is made of gold. Silver too has increased a good deal.
However, don’t forget that the gold in your jewellery is made from an alloy of gold. That means that other, usually less costly metals, are mixed in with the pure gold to make its carat.

Chinese people like to buy jewellery made from 24 carat gold and some folks from the Arabic counties prefer 22 carat gold, but the rest of the world likes 9 carat which is the most used in Australia and a good deal in England, 14 carat and 18 carat which is used in the USA and Europe.

Let’s have a look at the factors that are important to the price of your jewellery. If your gold jewellery is made from nine carat yellow gold then it only has 37.5 percent gold in it, if it is 14 carat then it only has 58.5 percent real gold in it.

Now understand that an average ladies ring might have 2.5 grams of gold in it and at current retail rates that gold content might be worth say, $30 per gram. So if gold went up a further 50% then the gold in your ring won’t go up 50% because it is an alloy and not pure gold, and there is only a small bit of gold in the ring so your $600 ring might be worth another $30 or so.

Jewellery is priced on not just the cost of the gold content and the cost of even the precious stones but also the difficulty to manufacture it, and the design and the brand name of the manufacturer.

Gary Hocking is an Australian manufacturing jeweller and has his own website http://www.jewelleryexpress.com.au He will make that special piece of jewellery just for you. Ask him about custom jewellery work. You may copy and distribute this article as long as you use the bio and live link to his website.

Sydney jewellery Trade Fair.

2006-08-22T22:01:00.000-07:00

The Australian Jewellers Association jewellery fair for the trade has just ended after three days in Sydney.
There were hundreds of exhibitors from all over the world.

One and a half million dollars worth of diamonds were stolen during transport to the venue.

Security is very strict at the fair. In order to register the first time you must provide invoices from three suppliers for purchases that you have made three times throughout the past year and well as business identification and personal photo identification. These must be handed in about a week before the fair. At the fair it is similar to airport security with scanning, electronic bag and personal effects screening, checking of photo identification and then on the way out you must produce receipts for anything that you have bought.

But the thieves bypassed all of that fuss and stole the goods before they arrived at the fair.

Opal Inlay Jewelry – How it is made.

2006-08-11T18:50:00.000-07:00

There are many ways to set gemstones into rings, pendants and earrings or other pieces. There is claw set, bezel set, half bezel set and there is inlaying.
Normally you get a stone such as a ruby and it might measure 4mm and be an oval shape. It might also be 2.5 mm deep. So you go looking for a setting to fit that stone. You might need to have a setting specially made to suit your desire.

Inlay setting is much different to that. The manufacturing jeweller makes a piece of jewellery to a chosen design. Let’s say it is a ring. He makes the ring entirely even up to the stage of almost the final polish. Then he finds some stones to set in the ring. At this stage, he does not even have to have any stones in mind. He then finds some opal of a special kind.

The very best opal for this purpose is likely to be a good crystal opal. This is opal which is transparent. You can see faint shimmers of colour through it when you hold it to the light, especially sunlight. It looks very ordinary until you put it down on a black background then the magic happens. Brilliant colours burst into life. (If you wouild like to see some photos go to this article on my website: www.opaljewelryexpress.com and navigate to JewelryInformation/Opal Articles/Inlay ewelry Making at the bottom of the first opal page you come to.)

Any metal can be used for making inlay jewellery. The settings are made in the form of a hollow or a well in which the opal sits. It can be any shape rectangular, round, triangular or nay other shape imaginable. The depth of the well should be about 2mm. The stone is cut to fit into this well.

This is the way that I cut the stones and others do it differently. First I choose the top face of the stone and I grind it flat. I then put a dop stick on the top of that surface. A dop stick is a piece of wooden stick which has hot wax on it. This is stuck to the opal so that I can hold the opal.

Next I look down into the hole and I then start to cut the opal to the shape. Let’s say it is a rectangle for this exercise. I have two long sides and two short sides. I start to cut each side until I get close to the size. From then on I start to taper the opal sides as I get closer to the shape. This way I get the opal to fit into the shape but if I make an error in judgement I can cut some off the bottom and make the taper wider at the top end so that it fits.

Eventually the stone will fit in the well but it will protrude about one millimetre out of the top. I then mix the glue which will be a super strength Araldite two part epoxy glue. This is a clear glue but I then mix in a tiny drop of black tincture that I get from a paint shop.

I put the stone in the well with this glue. It is a tight fit but as it was tapered to get it inside then there is room for the glue. I make sure the metal is scratched clean and I warm the opal to dry it a little. I then apply mild pressure with a tiny clamp such as a spring loaded clothes peg on the stone and I leave this for 36 hours.

I then come back and I grind the top of the stone flush with the metal. Sometimes I grind the metal a fraction as well. I then polish the stone on a polishing wheel for opals and I hand polish the metal with small wheels and the correct metal polish.

That is a great deal of work and it takes a lot of practice. Sometimes, if I haven’t cut any inlay stones for several weeks then I will cut the first one with a piece of potch or worthless opal. This might take me 30 minutes and is a waste of my time but it is necessary to get my eye in, or get the feel for what I am doing. I find if I cut all day after a few hours I can just pick up a piece and grind it to the approximate size after just a single look at the piece of jewellery. But I lose that ability after about a week.

How strong are inlaid stones?

Well the stone is very well protected as it is sitting down surrounded by metal with a cushion of glue between it and the metal. So I think it is very safe. If the glue is a good one then it will be extremely difficult to get the stone out. I generally need to drill stones out of pieces if I am not happy with the inlay result. If all stones have to come out I can put the jewellery piece in a solvent for a few days and the glue will dissolve and the opal will be unharmed.

Carat Weight for Gemstone Jewelry – What’s it all mean?

2006-08-10T18:07:00.000-07:00

Carat is the term used for the measurement of the weight of diamonds and other gemstones. The word comes from the carob seed. A couple of hundred years ago merchants looked for something to compare the weight of gemstones with. They finally chose the carob seed as this seed was a very consistent weight from one seed to the next. So if a customer wanted a gemstone weighing two carobs seeds then another merchant would know what he wanted. In English the word ended up being pronounced as carat. When you see “ct” then that is an abbreviation for “carat.” Then you might also see “TW” or “ct TW” and those mean the total weight in carats of more than one stone in a ring.

Is a one carat diamond and a one carat opal the same size? A great question and the answer is a clear NO! The reason that gemstones are different sizes for the same weight is because some are more dense than others. Let me explain that concept of density. If you got a plastic bottle of water and put in the freezer the next day the bottle will have expanded and will be bigger than when you put it in there. But it will weigh the same! So an opal has water and air and looser mineral items inside it and will take up more space than a compact and compressed or dense diamond will. So an emerald has a different density to a topaz or a diamond or an opal.

What about small diamonds in my ring? What size are they? That’s another great question. A one carat diamond is a big expensive rock! We all know that but what about those little diamonds that we sometimes call accent stones? Well, we weigh them in what we call “points.” A one carat diamond has 100 points. So in rings we tend to have small diamonds which weigh one or two or three or more points. In the trade we say: “two pointer” or a “three pointer.” When we see that written as part of the make up of a piece of jewellery we will often see it written as hundredths of a carat. 0.01 means one point, 0.05 means a 5 point stone and so on. When we see a quarter of a carat we would see 0.025 carat.

However, a one carat diamond will cost a great deal more than 100 one pointers or 50 two pointers. One carat is a big diamond and rare, but little chips made into one pointers are not rare at all even though the quality might be the same as the big diamond.

Opals are an exception. We still use carats but anything under a carat we usually break down into tenths. So we might say an opal weighs 0.4 carats. We would not call it a 40 pointer like we might for a diamond. We would say an opal weighs 2.65 carats if we were being precise.

Finally, you might see a piece of jewellery weighing five carats. That will mostly mean the total weight of the piece of jewelry the metal plus the gems. Then you might see that you can get it in 14 carat gold or 18 carat gold. That’s carat gold and that’s another story so don’t confuse that with the carat weight of the gemstones.

My Favorite Gemstone Comes from the Planet Mars.

2006-08-08T16:54:00.000-07:00

I wanted to buy my wife an exotic gemstone, but what do you buy a jeweller’s wife. She has diamonds up to her armpits and opals coming out of her ears.
Then I suddenly thought there is one gemstone that is found on the red planet. I’ll get her one of those.

I wanted a gem that got here the hard way, one that had a history, one that you didn’t just trip over on a beach. Well this gemstone is also found on the planet earth as well as Mars so I could get it locally. It got here the hard way through being blasted up from the earth’s mantel as molten mineral to crystalise near the surface as a beautiful green, much overlooked, not well respected gem in modern times, with an up market name Peridot!

Peridot is pronounced the French way which sounds like Pair-a-doh. It might be from the French word peritot for unclear since the stone generally has a lot of inclusions or it might be from the Arabic faridat meaning gem.

It is one of the only gemstones which come in only one colour. I like that too! It is definite and knows what it is. The green will vary because of the amount of iron present. It has often been called the poor man’s emerald. Well, emerald is thought of as the most expensive gemstone so I guess that is a compliment in itself.

But if we go back in time peridot was there from the beginning. Peridot was one of the twelve stones in the breastplate of Aaron the Jewish high priest from Exodus in the bible. This breastplate had twelve stones which represented the twelve tribes of Israel. So it was a very important gemstone in ancient times. It has been mined as a gem for over four thousand years.

It was mined on the island of Zagbargad since ancient times. Imagine if you could get hold of one which was mined here in ancient times. How fantastic would that be as it is all but mined out now.

Although Peridot comes from a host of different countries such as Australia, Pakistan, Myanmar, Egypt, Mexico and Brazil the quality varies from one source to another. But 95% of the entire world production comes from the San Carlos Apache Reservation in Arizona.

But if you want the real exotic gemstone from outer space you will have to look for the name Pallasites. This is a type of meteorite named after a German Peter Pallas who described it way back in 1772. In 2003 Nasa discovered peridot crystals on Mars. This was the first time that a gemstone had been found on another planet.

A beautiful stone which set in gold will make stunning jewellery and if you are lucky to get hold of one which came from Mars or somewhere else in outer space you will be indeed fortunate.

How to make a bezel set opal pendant.

2006-07-26T03:40:00.000-07:00

The first thing I need is some bezel wire and as today I have run out I’ll need to make some more. This is a time consuming task. I often buy bezel wire but as I am not always happy in the quality I get from a goldsmith I tend to make it. Also, the gold merchant has only two sizes 3mm x 0.3mm and 5mm x 0.3mm. Sometimes I like thick bezels that I can cut down and file to shape.

Step one is to get some scrap metal left from castings that I have not used or ones that have failed and also bits of cut up scrap. I do not use any old rings or pieces which might have impurities in them.

Pleae note: If the images cannot be seen in this article go to my site www.opaljewelryexpress.com and look for this article in the jewelry information section.

I am going to melt this gold down in a crucible with a mixture of propane gas and oxygen using a large torch specially bought for this purpose.

Step Two
I put a pinch of borax powder on the metal so that it will flow. Once the gold has melted and is the correct temperature I pour it into a mould which will make it into an ingot that resembles a big nail. When I am pouring I keep the gold hot with the torch.

Once it has been poured I open the mould and take the gold out and quench it in water.

Step Three
I then anneal the metal. This means that I heat it to a cherry red colour with a bushy blue/yellow flame and then I quench it again. This will happen many, many times as the metal needs to be brought back to its original state.

When you hammer or squash metal it gets hard and brittle. This is called work hardening. It makes the metal unworkable so I need to anneal it and bring it back to its correct form.

Step Four.

I now pass the gold through a rolling mill. When the metal gets about half its thickness I need to anneal it again. Eventually what stated off as a piece of metal about 100mm long will be around a metre long and will be ideal to use as bezel wire.

Step Five.

Now I have some bezel wire and I wrap it around the opal. I get the rough shape and the size is nearly perfect. It has taken me a long time to be able to guess where I need to cut the wire to make it the right size.

I now put this on a steel mandrel and with a rawhide or bounceless hammer I hammer it to the correct shape and the opal fits snugly into the bezel.

The next step is to solder it to a piece of plate which I will show next time.

Tales From the Opal fields – The Day Fritz was Taken by Aliens.

2006-07-25T01:35:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of people who live on the Australian opal fields who never do any opal mining. In fact, some of them have never even been down a mine and wouldn’t know a good piece of opal from a wombat.

Imagine driving 10 hours from Sydney where most people believe life is wonderful by any standard in the world and arriving in a place where the trees don’t like to grow much more than head height, grass ( except marihuana) is an extinct herb, and where you might as well say it never rains because if it ever does it generally just falls down holes in the ground and is never seen again.

Ah! But when it rains the native flowers bloom and throw themselves out of the ground like a virgin’s bosom and the grass sprouts in front of your eyes like a head of hair and everyone, and I mean everyone, even Wayne who just grunted the day he heard the news that his first son had been born, simply explode into smiles, leap into the air and come down grabbing and hugging the first person that they see. The barman traditionally puts on a free keg of beer and turns on the coloured party lights and runs them all night long!

No he doesn’t. There’s not even any electricity and I’ve already told you that the grass is extinct. What really happens is that the opal dirt, which is everywhere you walk, since it is taken out of the mines and spread around the planet where you have to walk gets wet and turns into a kind of gooey, marshmallow mud which is a cross between epoxy resin and crap. Then everyone is just pissed off!

Yes, imagine driving 10 hours from Sydney and finding this place and thinking: This is it! I am home. I have found my place in the sun…

Well, you certainly have and in 55 degrees Celsius that sun is going to burn your bald head up like a snag on a bar-b-que and even worse if you take your hat off.

Well, Fritz is one of those non mining people. He came from Germany as a baby booming German which was understandably hell on earth and traveling via Canada where he became a Canadian he eventually found this glorious place in the sun and thought: Ja, Ich bin nicht mehr ein Berliner!
To be continued

How to Buy Jewellery Safely On Line.

2006-07-23T18:28:00.000-07:00

Many people, including myself, have natural, healthy fears of making a purchase for anything over the internet. For me it involves many aspects that I know are dangerous: giving my credit card to a stranger, no matter whether it is a real person or a computer form or shopping cart, trusting and dealing with someone in a foreign country

But I do make purchases every week. I buy jewellery, precious stones, gold and silver items, information, books, computer parts and much more. For me it is a way of life and business. Have I been cheated? Have I lost money? Have I been frustrated and angry? Yes to all questions!

Buying Jewellery on line is something that presents special problems all of its own. But I do it and I do it with very little chance of failure.

Firstly, let’s look at the problems I face:
1. I don’t know the people I am buying from.
2. I cannot touch and feel the item.
3. It costs me a lot of money to telephone people in foreign lands and be put on hold or go through a series of staff members before getting to someone who can help me.
4. There are language problems.
5. I am highly uncomfortable making a payment on line.

Now let’s look at the problems in more detail and the solutions:

1. As I don’t know the people I am buying from I have to find out about them. So I read their entire website. I read the “about us” part, the services provided etc. In fact, I read the entire website like a detective. I want to get a feel for these people. I want to know if I can trust them. If I cannot find a person’s name to contact then I will almost never buy from them.
2. If, on the other hand, I find that Mr Richard Smythe can be contacted by email, and telephone and that the business has a physical address then I am starting to feel good about this company. I’ll send him an email first and if I get no answer then that is the last time I think about that site. If he answers my email then I’ll most likely ring him.
3. As I cannot touch the piece of jewellery I expect a full identification of it. I want to know the carat of the metal, the type of metal, the weight of the metal, the type and size of the gemstones and their weight. I want to see the back of the piece of jewellery if possible.
4. To get over the costs of telephone calls I email first or I take advantage of the live chat facility. Then I find a person and a number and I tell them that I am going to ring them at a certain time.
5. There are language problems. Even minor things such as my Australian accent and the words that we use are not often used in countries such as the USA. So, being aware of that I speak loudly, clearly and without any of the words that the other person may not be familiar with. Simple things like using the term “claws” rather than the American term ”prongs” will cost me money in a telephone call when I am discussing jewellery.
6. I always want to see the close padlock on a shopping cart. I want to read about their secure encryption process.

Now, I have emailed and telephoned the staff, and I have read enough about the product and I am as comfortable about the ordering process as I can be I am ready to make a purchase. I buy a small cheap item and wait for it to show up. If that goes well then I will buy more.

I want to buy from a good website which has a person I can talk to on the telephone and I want a secure shopping cart and lastly I want to see a returns policy. No returns policy equals no sale.

Here is an example of how I do it. Three weeks ago I wanted to buy a good tanzanite stone for several thousand dollars. I found a website in Nairobi Kenya who had what I wanted. My plan was my usual way of doing business. I would first email and ask some questions about the product and get a contact. I would then telephone the person and ask many more questions. As I have a friend who lives in Nairobi I would get her to go and make sure that the business was real and a good one.

I sent an email to the contact specified on the website. I told them I was an Australian jeweller and asked questions about the products. The website said that they would answer emails within 24 hours. Well, I am still waiting and they have lost all credibility so I will cross them off my list.

The author Gary Hocking is an Australian jeweller who has his own website. http://www.jewelleryexpress.com.au You are free to copy and distribute this article as long as you keep the bio and the live link to his website intact.

Tension Setting Diamonds

2006-07-18T17:32:00.000-07:00

Tension Settings for Diamonds, Rubies and Sapphires.

Whenever I set a diamond I lament. Oh what a terrible waste of money to spend thousands of dollars on a precious stone and then to bury it in a cavern of metal and then go even further and cover part of the top with more metal.

There are the two traditional ways of setting a diamond: prong set or bezel set. Both methods require that a bed of metal be made flat to allow the diamond to sit carefully down. This is called the seat.

Then the claws are pushed over the top of the stone in order to hold it in place. Bezel setting has a strip of metal going around the side of the diamond and then it too is folded or pushed across the top sides of the stone in order to hold it in place. So what do you actually get to see? Well, you get to see the very top of the stone if you look down on top of a bezel setting and if you look under the stone you will see a pointy part poking out.

In a prong setting you see the same from the underside and a little more from the top and side. But there are still these unattractive prongs getting in your view of the stone that you paid a great deal of hard earned money for.

But there is another way: Tension Setting! A New York jeweller and designer named Steven Kretchmer took jewellery manufacture to a level not even imaginable by the average bench jeweller. After doing the normal courses in the trade he then went on to study with leading Japanese and Italian metalsmiths. He studied metallurgy and it seems he was absolutely consumed by his work and research. The results will be with us for a very long time.

Kretchmer discovered a way of making a metal alloy have memory so that, when in the form of a ring, if it was stretched open and then allowed to close it sprung back to where it was originally. The application was a new and wonderful way of setting a diamond in a ring by tension.

The beauty of his method is that you can see most of the diamond or precious stone that you have paid for. Not only that but since the stone is not covered up with metal the light can get to it and pass through it from every which way! Brilliant! For this is how we get to appreciate a precious stone. Take a $100,000 diamond and demonstrate it to a guest in a dark room. Ask them what they think of it? Of course there is nothing to think about because without light entering the stone and reflecting off the facets made by the expert diamond cutter there will be no explosive glitter and flash of beauty. Up to a point when you cover the stone with metal, the dark room effect is happening here too.

But not so with tension setting. Here the stone is held in place by a groove made in the metal and this is where the girdle or pointy part around the outside edge of the diamond sits. That is all that touches the diamond and you can see nearly the whole stone.

Is it safe with all that pressure?
That is an obvious and excellent question. Experts say not only is it safe but it is actually safer than a prong setting. Prongs get snagged in clothing and often get torn off and the diamond falls out of the ring. Perhaps even worse over years the prongs wear down and away without you even noticing and one day they simply peel off and away goes your diamond.

What sort of stones can be tension set?

Kretchmer says only stones 9 or above on the Moh’s scale of hardness where diamond is 10 can be tension set. Other manufacturers suggest that stones of a hardness of 8 can be tension set. So, diamonds, rubies and sapphires are all great stones to be tension set. Stones with external flaws may not be set this way.

Can rings be resized?

They can be resized about a size in some cases but it depends on the design of the ring. If you do need a resize at some stage you would be advised to take the ring back to the manufacturer for this special service.

Tension rings should not be engraved as the memory can be lost and they will fail to be the same standard as when manufactured.

What sort of stone shapes can be tension set?

Tension setting works best for round stones but marquise, trillion shaped stones are being set this way as well.

Tension set rings are a magnificent way to show a precious stone. They are getting more popular and popping up everywhere but I suggest that you look for quality and be prepared to pay for it. This is not backyard technology and requires an experienced designer and manufacturer.

What has the Sword of Damascus got to do with Modern Day Wedding Bands?

2006-07-15T21:41:00.000-07:00

When the brave and experienced fighting Christian knights trekked the long route to the holy lands to fight the Muslims they were in for a terrible surprise. They were beaten and beaten hard and repeatedly and eventually sent packing back to England and Europe defeated.

What they were not prepared for was the secret weapon of the enemy they came to easily slaughter in the name of God. The Muslim fighters had a superior weapon and that was Damascus steel.

Their swords and daggers were made from this vastly superior steel. It is said, and probably a fanciful bit of exaggeration, that a Damascus sword could slice through a silk scarf falling through the air. True or not, the Damascus sword was amazingly sharp but also much stronger than normal steel.

So the Muslims had the capability to cut a strand of hair off or hack through the armor of the crusader. It is frustrating to fight sword against sword when your opponent’s weapon can break yours in half.

This technology is used in some special jewellery called Damascus Jewellery today. But it is not the strength of the metal that is sought but the look of it. Damascus steel is characterized by the pattern on the metal. “Damas” in Arabic means water and it is sometimes thought that the term Damascus steel originates from this and the pattern on the metal which resembles various forms of windswept, rippling water.

So today we have some stunning jewellery in the form of rings, bangles, chokers and bracelets called Damascus Jewellery. It has this characteristic pattern, mostly a swirling, twisting, overlapping effect.

Ore was smelted in Hyberdad in southern India and put into crucibles and made in solid pieces of metal called billets. These billets were taken to Damascus in Syria and forged into swords and daggers. The metal was folded, melted together, folded again, and this process was continued until it was finally melted and hammered into a sword with great strength and beauty.

For a couple of hundred years the metallurgy technique was lost to the world and but the sword smith techniques have continued so today we can get a Damascus ring made from two different metals hammered and forged together with the original looking patterns of the Damascus steel. In a sense it is wrong to call it Damascus as it is only part of the original process but it doesn’t need the original sharpness or strength either.

How to Measure your Ring Size.

2006-07-03T23:33:00.000-07:00

How to Measure your Ring Size.

Online customers ask me all the time how do I measure my partner’s ring size without them knowing. They also ask how do I measure my own finger? A recent customer was from outback Australia and she had lost her only rings long ago. She wished to buy a ring and wanted to know how to tell her ring size. She observed the following instructions carefully, I made her a gold ring with diamonds, it fitted perfectly and she never even had to leave her cattle station.

Naturally, it is always going to be more accurate if you can get a jeweller to give you a fitting but we cannot always do that so following are my tips and if you are careful you can be quite accurate enough. My customers do it all the time.

Some important considerations.

First of all let’s understand what ring sizing actually is. Ring size and finger size are two different things entirely. A ring is a solid, hard piece of material usually metal and it does not bend and squash to the shape of your finger. Your finger is never going to have this exact shape because it will get fat, get thin over time, and will swell and shrink with different temperatures etc.

In any case, have a look at your fingers you probably won’t find them perfectly round and don’t forget the knuckle which has to be passed and might be any shape and a different size to where the ring will sit.

Which finger will it be worn on? Does it matter?

Yes, of course it matters. If you are going to buy your wife a new dress ring and you take a measurement from her engagement ring then remember that she is still going to wear that engagement ring on her wedding ring finger and the new one on another finger or hand. If this new ring is going on the middle finger then allow at least a size as this finger is bigger. If it is going on the same finger but on the other hand then it should be almost the same, perhaps it will end up a touch tight.

Wide band or narrow band? Does it matter?

Yes it will matter. If it is a wide band you should allow for a larger size. Somewhere between a half to a full size extra.

I see on the internet different ring sizes. What is that all about?

Rings sizes in the UK and Australia are the same. They are letters of the alphabet and can be in half sizes and quarter sizes. Ring sizes in the USA are numbers and can be half sizes and quarter sizes as well.

When I speak to women on the telephone I have some fun by telling them that I bet their ring size is a 7 or a British N ½. How do I know this? Simply because that is the average western woman’s ring finger size. This should give you a guide too. If you are petite with small hands you will be smaller than a 7, perhaps a 6 or even a 5 but not likely to be smaller than that unless you are a child. Then, if you are a big lady you will go up from seven to a 9 or 10 perhaps. So already by now you can make a guess as to whether you are going to be a 6 or an 8.

Ring sizing chart. For a full chart see my website http:www.jewelleryexpress.com.au

Inside diameter for British sizes 16.5mm
Inside circumference for British sizes 51.8mm
US sizes 6
UK & Australian L 1/2

How to measure your finger size if you have a ring to compare.

Firstly measure the inside diameter of the ring. This is a measurement taken across the centre of the ring from the inside of one side to the inside of the other side. It is not easy and remember you are only concerned with the inside of the ring as that is where the finger goes. Make a couple of attempts and remember that the largest measurement is going to be the correct one. So once you have found that a couple of times you can be fairly sure that it is accurate.

Next you can measure the inside circumference of the ring

Get a stiff piece of paper as thin as possible and slide it inside the ring until it fits perfectly. Keep cutting little bits off the ends until both ends fit together snugly. You will then have an inside length that you can measure accurately. Allow a touch extra because the paper will have taken up a bit of space inside the ring.. Then measure the length of the paper. Now you have two measurements to compare with the chart. You only need one but using the two will give greater accuracy as one will be a check on the other.

Now that you have the length of the inside of the ring mark this length on a piece of very stiff paper or thin cardboard. Now tape it together so that it looks like a ring. Make it as wide as the real ring. Put this on your finger and then try the real ring on. Both of these have to be the same. Even if they do not fit your finger if it is not your ring, they will both fit on the exact same position on your finger.

Next check the inside diameter and inside circumference against the chart and read the size. Now you must be very close to the real size if you have been careful.

How to measure you partner’s ring size in secret.

If you can get to a jeweller you can do this: Put your partner’s ring on your finger. Pick a finger where the ring fits as close to a normal position as possible. Mark two marks, one on either side if the ring. Leave them there and go to a jeweler and tell them you want to find out what size ring goes on your finger where these marks are. That is going to get very close to what you need. Make sure it goes past a knuckle as this is eventually going to happen with the real ring.

How to measure your own finger size when you don’t have a ring to measure.

Take a piece of stiff cardboard, plastic or thick wire and wrap it around the finger then mark the exact spot where the ends join.
With a ruler measure the length of this piece of cardboard or wire.
Read from the chart the ring size.

Note:

1. Do not use a piece of string as this will bend to the shape of your finger. It is best to use a piece of thick cardboard the width of the new ring.

2. After you have measured the length then tape it together and put it on your finger just like a real ring. Be sure not to push or squeeze it because you won’t be able to do that with a real ring.

3. If you have used a thin piece of wire and your new ring is a wide band you must add some size to allow for this. The reverse may also be true. If you use a wide piece of cardboard but the ring is going to be thin then take a quarter size off.

So now you have a working model for your jewellery and as a further test you can check the measurements on the chart and read off the size. You must be getting very close if you have been careful.

Enhancing Gemstones. Are They Still Natural?

2006-06-18T18:44:00.000-07:00

How do you feel if I told you that 90% of the worlds sapphires are heat treated and so is nearly every ruby that you will ever see and that a good deal of the emeralds that you might buy are oiled and that you can safely assume that the topaz you are wearing has been heat treated or, and you wouldn’t think this, irradiated! Your pearls are probably dyed or bleached with chlorine or hydrogen peroxide, your beautiful citrine would not look that lovely colour without heat treatment and then tanzanite starts off its life as a dirty yellow brown crystal and turns into Cinderella after massive heat treatment. Every tanzanite that you are likely to see will have been heat treated. Well it’s true!

What I am going to tell you might make you think differently about that lovely piece of gemstone jewellery that you love to wear, but you’ll still be happy to wear it.

Firstly, before we jump to any conclusions and think that enhancing natural stones such as rubies and sapphires is a terrible thing to do, or somehow cheating, we should think about what natural stones look like when they are found or mined. In most cases they look like lumps of coal or dirty rock, or dull glass. Most of the time you would sweep them out of your hut without a care in the world.

The first alterations that everybody seems to forget about but are perfectly content with is shape enhancement or cutting of the stone. This is a very time consuming process where great skills are used to cut off most of the material from the natural stone. In many cases most of the material is rubbish and is thrown away. Then there comes polishing and faceting which is a part of the cutting process after the shape has been improved.

After that many more enhancements are carried out: bleaching, coating such as lacquering, dyeing, filling of internal cracks and holes, irradiation, heating, laser treatment, oil or resin infusion and many others.

Why are gemstones enhanced?

Well, obviously in order to improve their selling ability and their overall appearance.
Some, if not most, natural stones have what we call inclusions. These are imperfections inside the gem. They may be cracks, holes or foreign objects which cause cloudiness or just odd reflections.

How are gemstones enhanced?

In order to get rid of these imperfections sometimes holes are drilled into the stone and the imperfection is removed or perhaps a filler substance such as oil, wax, epoxy resin or other substance is placed inside the gemstone to fill the void.

A good example is the wonderful gemstone emerald. Emeralds may have internal fractures which change the way the light enters and exits the stone which alters its clarity and beauty. If the emerald is immersed in or coated with a substance such as an oil having the same refractive quality as the natural stone then the gemstone can achieve a step nearer to perfection.

Sometimes other methods are used to get rid of these inclusions. Heat treatment is often used for this purpose. Once a stone is heated to a certain temperature the inclusion may actually disappear forever. You probably wouldn’t think that this is a bad thing would you. When the stone is heated sometime these inclusions will dissolve and hence the stone will be improved.

Heat treatment is the most common form of enhancement done to gemstones and the main reason it is done is to improve the colour.

Sometimes a gem will change its colour just by low heat from a cigarette lighter or spirit lamp, but other times it takes enormous heat which takes the stone to almost melting point.

Sometimes this alone is enough to change the colour of the stone permanently but laboratory technicians in this field also heat these gemstones in the presence of other substances such as chromium oxide powder which will coat the surface and change the color.

Perhaps the wildest sounding treatment is irradiation which is commonly done to many gemstones. Topaz starts life off as a clear crystal and by irradiation it turns brown and then heat treatment turns it blue. The amount of this treatment determines whether it becomes a Swiss Blue or a London Blue or a Sky Blue. Is there any danger to humans? Well, there is some concern and a lot of debate about this.

These treatments are done to natural occurring gemstones. These are not man-made stones. That is another story again.

Some of these treatments have been done to gemstones for hundreds and hundreds of years. So even though your gemstones has been cut up, drilled and filled, irradiated and heated it is still natural. Funny isn’t it as this is hardly what we would consider a natural product when we think of most items that we buy.

Google Search Numbers!

2006-06-17T06:03:00.000-07:00

It is 11:oo Saturday night June 16 and I am just answering emails and thanking people for placing orders from the USA, England and Australia which were placed while I was watching the Sat night movie on televison. The closest order to my location was for a custom made opal ring from a lady who lives about 50 minutes drive from my house.

The customer wants to know when she can get it delivered but she probably doesn't know how close we are.

My customers come from all over the world: Switzerland, Russia, South America, Asia and the far outback regions of Australia as well as the UK and the USA.

One day I received an order over the internet from a customer who lives about 15 minutes drive from my premises. I had a friend visiting and I asked if he would drop it off.

Without letting the customer know that we were in Australia let alone the same location my friend delivered the piece of jewellery in less than 30 minutes from the order. He is a real estate agent and was all dresed up in his usual dark suit and tie. That was fun!

What I am so excited about at the moment and I just have to blog on about is that I just check to see where http://jewelleryexpress.com.au is on Google at the moment - I do that all the time as most website owners might do as well.

Search engine results may vary from minute to minute these days but one thing is certain, the major search for an Australian jewellery website is for the search term "jewellery." My mentors, with nearly ten years of internet search engine optimisation experience, told me that I would never get high Google ranking for a major search result such as that.

My friends, tonight for the search term "jewellery"on a world search from Australia which had 116 million results my site ranked number 21! Let me say that again 116 MILLION! and we were position number Twenty One!

There is an internet god after all! I am not looking for weeks and weeks now as I want to live this moment!

Regards,

Gary Hocking

Marquise Diamond Cut

2006-06-15T02:08:00.000-07:00

When a diamond cutter has a piece of stone to cut he naturally thinks of getting the most money from the cut. So he thinks of a round brilliant cut first as that is the most common, profitable and popular cut. But what about if he has a piece that is long then he must make a decision: cut a marquise shape or cut it down into perhaps more than one smaller stones. Smaller diamonds are not worth as much as larger ones. A one carat round brilliant cut diamond is worth say $600 but you might only get $450 for a full carat weight of very small stones!

But a marquise cut, sometimes called the navette cut, is not worth as much as the same weight in a round so the decision is a considerable one. They generally do not have as much brilliance as a round cut stone.

The marquise is the elongated or stretched looking shape. It was supposedly designed for Louis XIV. Because of the shape of a marquise cut stone an effect known as the bow tie effect occurs. This is a dark area in the centre which resembles a black bow tie. It will almost always be there and is a negative quality which is worse sometimes than other times. You mightn’t have noticed before but you will now. It happens in pear shapes as well.

The Marquise cut is most often in a proportion of 1:2 or the width is half as long as the length. Although it is not the cut that the diamond cutter wants to make, and it is harder to cut and even worse the pointed ends are more easily broken, it nevertheless may end up being the most profitable for him.

It lends itself to wonderful settings and suits some long fingers admirably. It is different and we all don’t want to wear what our neighbour is wearing. If you like it, and I just love it, then you are going to be exceptionally happy to get a higher quality diamond for 10-20% less than you are likely to pay for a round cut.

It is one of those diamond shapes which are ideal for running up and down the finger. Just today I was handed a lovely marquise to design and make into a ring. The husband who gave me the ring wants it made so that it goes across the finger. I first asked him how big his wife was. As he didn’t know her ring size I wanted to form a picture of her in order to make up my mind what might suit her. Tall lady with long fingers then there is no decision to be made up and down the finger will look lovely.

It turns out that she is tiny with small fingers and he subtly indicates that she was thinner once a long time ago. I make up my mind that it should be set almost diagonally across the finger. That’s a kind of compromise just in case she turns out to be wider than she is high!
I'll keep you posted on what I make her.

Don’t dismiss the lovely, elegant marquise cut because of the bow tie, or the fact that it is easily broken. If set well and looked after as it should be it will look just stunning!

Making Jewellery the Cad /Cam Way It’s the Future!

2006-06-10T21:33:00.000-07:00

Cad means computer assisted drawing and Cam means computer assisted manufacturing and they have been around for a long time now.

A jeweller makes a piece of jewellery in two traditional ways: Firstly, by hand, using files, saws, soldering equipment and a host of other gadgets. It takes a long time and might take days or weeks to finish one single piece. Secondly, by making a model first and then having this cast in metal. He makes the model either by hand in a cheap metal such as brass, copper or silver, or carving it out of wax. Even this second method takes just as long as the first or a good part of it.

Enter the computer. Using a specially written computer programme a trained user of the programme draws the item, lets say a ring. This process might take a few hours depending on the skill of the operator and the intricacy of the ring.

After the drawing is made then it is downloaded to a computerized manufacturing machine which can understand the file. There are different types of these machines. One type is where the actual drawing is cut by machinery directly into metal. So the drawing goes in and a ring comes out. The most common type is where a machine prints wax like a printer prints ink and the lines of wax are built up into the form of the piece of wax jewellery. This process might take twelve to twenty four hours but it is all automatic.

We end up with a wax model of the ring. Now it has to be made into precious metal and for that we use the lost wax casting method, a method that is used the world over to mass produce identical pieces of jewellery.

The computer operator does not need to be a jeweller but he or she would certainly need a jeweller’s advice to fully understand what he was attempting to draw.

But then jewellers are mostly computer illiterate. Find a manufacturing jeweller and try to get him to send you a jpeg file by email and you will surely agree with me as you see the blank look on his face.

So we either need a computer literate, experienced jeweller, which is a very rare animal indeed, or we need two people with different skills one a computer expert with this programme and the other a jeweller and get them to work together to produce a piece of jewellery.

It might sound like the holy grail of making jewellery but there is a lot involved. What with serving his favorite customers in his shop, dealing with sales reps, answering phone calls etc your local jeweller is not likely to be skilled enough or have the time to make you a wax model by hand let alone draw you a computer image. There are people who just make wax models by hand for jewellers and do nothing else.

The computer programme costs around $5,000 US to purchase and the lessons cost something around $1,000 plus per day for a few days in order to cover the basics and then there will be many months of practice ahead. The printing machine will cost around the $60,000US. So, all in all, you are not going to see these around in small manufacturing workshops for a long time.

One day you will walk into a jewellery shop and sit down with a designer, jeweller or computer operator and tell him what it is that you would like. He will show you designs and after you get across what you like then he will draw the image for you. Of course, this won’t happen while you are sitting there, but it is feasible that later the same day you might be able to see the image. Then after some minor touch ups it will be printed and then manufactured. You might have a piece of jewellery by the next week. That’s some time in the future I believe but it will happen and may happen here and there right now.

Webmasters are free to use this article as long as they keep the attached bio and live link to the author.

Author: Gary Hocking, is a manufacturing jeweller who makes jewellery for people all over the world. He makes items one-off by hand, or makes waxes by hand, or uses Cad/Cam technology to make that special piece for his clients. He has his own website,
http:// www.jewelleryexpress.com.au

More About Hallmarking. What Are Those Stamped Marks on my Ring?

2006-06-09T19:39:00.000-07:00

Hallmarking began somewhere back in the thirteenth century most likely in France. Its purpose was to test coins made of silver and gold so that the correct amount of precious metal was actually in the item. It was the original consumer protection law.

In England in 1327 it became law that if you were selling an item made of precious metal it had to be tested. Manufacturers were compelled to take their articles to the hall where the Assay Master would test the precious metal content. Once it passed the test then he stamped the item with marks indicating the fineness or content of the precious metal and eventually other stamps were added such as a date, maker and the assay office mark.
So the term hallmarking came into existence.

Right up until 1773 if you tried to dupe your customers by counterfeiting the hallmark stamps the offence was punishable by death. Thank God it was then changed to just the offender being sent off to one of the penal colonies for a mere 14 years! Today in the UK it is just 10 years in the clink.

So what do these marks look like?
The marks tell three basic things: the maker (or his sponser if he is not available), the fineness or amount or percentage of precious metal in the item and the assay office where it was tested. The maker will have his own particular stamp in letters, the fineness will be a number such as 925, and the assay office’s mark will be a symbol such as the current Birmingham office’s mark which is an anchor. There are other non compulsory marks as well.

Over the centuries these marks have changed significantly and that’s a great thing for dating antique jewellery and watches. For instance, when a certain mark was used for the year then we can accurately date the time an item may have been made. When marks changed along the way that helps us quickly identify the general period of manufacture.

Does Jewellery need to be assayed today? Legally in the UK and some European countries it certainly does. Some other countries allow a self regulation to take place.
Other countries which do not consider themselves as major producers have no requirement. The stamp such as 925 on silver jewellery is not hallmarking. So in Australia you will see 9 carat or 925 stamped on a silver ring but this is an indication that the manufacturer claims the correct content of precious metal has been included but this is not hallmarking which takes place in the UK.

What does it mean to you the purchaser of an 18 carat engagement ring? Well, if the manufacturer has cheated you and your ring is only 95% precious metal then you would never know. It is so minute an amount that you would not perceive it. The only way you, as a layman, will ever be able to tell is by comparing the ring to another piece of 18 carat gold jewellery. However, if a large manufacturer on the world stage saves a fraction of gold on every item then that would be an enormous profit saving at the end of the year. So while this law is there to protect you do you really care? The manufacturer has to get the item to an assay office, insure its delivery, wait a few days to get it back and then pay for the service. So who is really going to pay for all this? You of course!

Webmasters are free to copy and circulate this article as long as the authors bio and live link remain.

Author: Gary Hocking who makes jewellery for people all over the world. He has his own website http://www.jewelleryexpress.com.au

Synthetic Opals - How Do I Know if They are Real?

2006-06-06T17:26:00.000-07:00

Synthetic Opals? – How Do I Know if they are Real or Not and Should I buy them?

First of all what is a real opal? A real opal is a natural occurring stone. They vary like most gemstones from being dull and lifeless to brilliant and mystifying.
Well then, what is a synthetic opal? It is a man-made copy of nature.

Great looking opal is hard to find and expensive. Even the tiniest pieces can be made into something saleable. There are basically three type of opal pieces sold: Solids, which are one piece of natural opal stone, Doublets, which are two pieces and Triplets which are three pieces.

Doublets are usually one piece of real opal with a piece of black opal or some other stone glued to the back of it. So a doublet may no longer be 100% real natural opal. A triplet will be a doublet with a dome of clear substance on the top of it. This is often glass, quartz or something else. Triplets then, most likely only have one of their three parts as real opal.

Are doublets and triplets bad? Heavens no! They suit the lower budgets and that’s a good thing. Solids are the real thing and are the best. Doublets are a thin layer of real opal and are not as valuable and triplets are less valuable again.

Now we have totally man made or synthetic opals. These are actually opals but the normal process of nature has been sped up so what occurs over millions of years now occurs in a laboratory in months or years. The result is stunning!

How can I tell if it is synthetic?

It is not easy but let me say that most retailers will wittingly not try to pass off synthetic opal as real. I have gone into shops in different parts of the world and told the owners that what they are calling opal is not real but synthetic opal. In all cases they were selling a lovely piece of jewellery with a small piece of synthetic stone and they were interested to learn, particularly when I showed them some real opal.

If you look at synthetic opal from the side it mostly has vertical striations which are quite uniform whereas natural opal is generally wobbly and layers go all over the place. These striations are too uniform and is a good sign that you are looking at synthetic, but I have seen and mined real opal that looks like this too.

Synthetic opal will be perfect in most cases whereas natural opal is flawed. If it looks too good then it probably isn’t a natural stone.

But should you buy a synthetic opal? Why not! They look stunningly beautiful. I buy them and I cut them and make them into fantastic pieces of jewellery that my customers and my family are happy to wear. You just have to appreciate that they are synthetic.

Why is the Humble Cuttlefish in the Jewellery Industry?

2006-06-01T04:08:00.000-07:00

The cuttlefish is a relative of the squid. It has one big difference in that is has a bone called the cuttlebone which is made of calcium carbonate and can allow the fish to float and sink at will. You will know the cuttlefish bone as the thing that you buy from pet shops to give your canary or other bird something to sharpen his beak with. But you don't see them as big as the one next to Sparky there!

That backbone is precisely why this fish has been an important part of the jewellery industry.

When a jeweller makes a piece of jewellery he sometimes has to forge the metal and then bend and cut and file just in order to get the correct shape.

Well, if he has something resembling the shape that he wants already then wouldn’t it be great if he could use that as a model and make another one just like it!

That’s where the cuttlefish bone comes into play.

In simple terms you take a piece of bone, slice it into two halves and then press the model into one half stopping about halfway through and then put the other half of the bone on top of that and press them together like a sandwich. You then take out the model, put the two pieces together again and bind them up with wire.

You now have a mould of the shape you want. The next step is to pour molten metal into the mould and when it cools you have a copy of the item.

The reason why cuttlebone works is because it is soft enough to penetrate with the model but hard enough to stand up when you take the model out. Lastly, it is fire resistant and when you pour the metal into it there is no danger of fire.

This process is relatively quick and saves the jeweller a lot of time and wasted metal. It is messy and kind of primitive but is still used today by some jewellers with small workshops.

Author: Gary Hocking who has his own jewellery website http://www.jewelleryexpress.com.au

How to Care For Opal Jewelry.

2006-05-31T03:34:00.000-07:00

Today one of my customers who had bought a $1,000 opal ring from me told me that her friends had told her to keep her opal ring in a solution of clear mineral oil.

Hmmm! Please don’t do that. I have also heard lots of other advice such as keep your opals in water, vinegar, and other solutions. Rub soluble oil on them is another terrible thing that I have heard given as advice.

Some twelve years ago I spent about three months with George Roberts who still cuts and facets gemstones for a living like he has been doing for a very long time. George is a miner and gemologist so he knows what he is talking about when it comes to opals.

When George put an opal in a small ultrasonic machine I was horrified. All that I have heard was that this would surely destroy the opal. George told me that he had never broken one this way.

As a rule I don’t tempt fate by doing that anymore but I did some experiments on opals because I wanted to see first hand what would happen when I did.

I got every conceivable solution that I thought people might put opals in and I put them in jars. I put a couple of opals in citric acid, a few more in vinegar, some more in oils, in pickling solutions, numerous solvents such as acetone, then petrol, methylated spirits and the list goes on. I left them there for weeks, months and years and some are still in their solutions.

The result? Nothing happened to the opals! Or, at least on a level that I could perceive.

As an opal miner I can tell you that when you are lucky enough to find opal it is in dry opal dirt, not soggy wet stuff. The mines are dry and the temperature is pleasant. The opals have been there like that for millions and millions of years so why should anyone think that they need to be put in oil or some other solution?

As an opal cutter I can tell you what I have been taught to do. In order to cut an opal you need to put it on a stick so that you can hold it to the grinding wheel. We heat the opal up a little and apply hot wax and push the stick and the opal together. After cutting we put the opal in the freezer for a couple of hours so that the wax and the opal contract differently and come apart. In my opinion that is pretty harsh treatment but the opal survives all of this and survives in those horrible solutions that I experimented with.

Here’s what my research eventually led me to believe is the best way to care for opal jewelry.

Keep it apart from your other jewelry so that it does not get scratched.
Occasionally clean it with a soft brush, perhaps the softest toothbrush in a solution of luke warm water and very mild detergent. Then rinse and lightly dry with an absorbent cloth but don’t rub it dry.
If your opals are doublets or inlays then they are held in place with glue so wash them only when necessary.

But they are reasonably hardy and they can be repaired and re-polished so enjoy them.

Life on the Opal Fields

2006-05-29T02:38:00.000-07:00

You search the net looking for a lovely opal ring and you see something for $500 and at first you think: Hmmm…that seems a bit expensive! Well, spare a thought for the poor old miner!

When I first arrived at the opal field called The Sheepyards just 70 kilometres on a dirt track from Lightning Ridge in NSW, Australia an old miner asked me if I was here to make some money. Well, of course I was. He pointed to the track behind me and said the easiest way to make money here is to get in your car and go back along the way you came until you get home again.

I started to take some photos of a few mining camps and another old miner asked me what the hell I thought I was doing? I said I thought the camps looked quaint and wanted a photo or two. He told me that was the easiest way to get shot!

So, they were two of the easiest things to find out on the opal fields and I now began to find out the hardest things but that would take years.

After spending the first $100,000 searching for elusive opal I knew that first old miner’s advice had been sound and not the usual scare tactic that I thought it had been.

It was the middle of a seven year drought and we had to buy water which was delivered by water cart. There is no electricity so you have to make your own using a generator which takes diesel fuel which you have to buy at probably the premium price in the entire nation.

Was it a dangerous place? Well, the last major town before you arrive at the field is Walgett and as you enter the town a sign on the bridge declared that you had to give way to horses. That was an indication that the area had a bit of catching up to do. Then I noticed another sign that declared the city was under constant video surveillance, and they weren’t even making a movie here! I noticed that every shop had bars the full length of every window and door. Something was seriously wrong in this place and this place was the last outpost of civilization!

I was intent on buying an old mining lease which had been mined for some time. During the inspection the vendor was pointing out where he had found opals. At one point he nonchalantly mentioned that he had found about $15,000 worth just up near the dead man. I thought I didn’t hear him right and I asked him if he, in fact, had said “near the dead man.” He said yes that was true. I exclaimed I was amazed that there had been a dead man there. He chuckled and said well he is still there. I walked around the bend in the drive and here was a skeleton buried under many tons of dirt. We were forty five feet below ground. Now, that was no ordinary burial!

2006-05-27T21:21:00.000-07:00

Titanium Jewellery
Amazing Titanium.

When I first handled titanium in Ernst Pfeffinger’s Sydney jewellery workshop I was impressed with the wonderful colours that he could get from heating the metal. He explained to me that the metal was hard to get and that he loved working with it.

Some years later, I bought a titanium ring and when I first picked it up I simply giggled. It was so light I thought … I love this stuff. Normally, I would wear a heavy ring but this was a new dimension, a ring that you almost didn’t know you were wearing.

Titanium is very light but strong and those are great qualities to have in a ring, particularly a gents’ ring. It doesn’t scratch like gold and it doesn’t tarnish or lose its luster like silver. It displays a white or silvery colour. In jewellery it looks great with a brushed, sandblasted or satin finish. I t can be engraved with your special words.

The metal is alloyed with iron and aluminium and often used in paints and other items such as toothpaste and correction fluid as well as for aircraft and ship building.

Titanium is virtually corrosive resistant when used in jewellery. It is resistant to most acids, even hydrochloric and diluted sulphuric acid so body or skin acids will not tarnish it.

My father-in-law likes it so much he had a surgeon use a saw to cut out his left hip bone and replace it with titanium.

As far as jewellery goes it can be made into rings, bracelets, cufflinks bangles etc. There is a downside in that resizing is difficult. It cannot be easily resized like gold or silver. To resize a ring it needs to be enlarged from the inside of the ring by removing some of the metal.

It is classified as hypoallergenic which means it won’t cause you a rash like some metals. It is ideal for those people who have trouble with other metals because their occupation exposes them to water, salt water, acid and other form of corrosion . Because it is so tough it is excellent for men and women doing manual work. Some manufacturers offer a free service to refinish the surface anytime and some offer a mind blowing lifetime guarantee. That indicates to me that noting is ever likely to go wrong with that ring.

Above all, for jewellery I think it lends itself to such a modern look that it surpasses gold and silver for some designs.

Author: Gary Hocking

What the heck are these things stamped on my Ring?

2006-05-27T00:38:00.000-07:00

Here is an article which will explain some of what these stamps are all about!

A Quick Look at Jewelry Hallmarks By David Foard
British Hallmarks are the best in the world.

Who says so, the rest of the World. Although to be fair, other countries have great hallmarks too, it is just that they are NOT so often seen.

A book on World Hallmarks for Gold or Silver items is a must for any serious collector or dealer, but they can be a little intimidating and time consuming. Is that mark a Cockerel or a Tree? Could it be made in Switzerland or Germany?

Thankfully for the rest of us, a small pocket book on UK Hallmarks is more than up to the task, coupled with that very useful plastic 10X eyeglass I keep on hinting for you to buy.

It will show you that the item has been tested and stamped, to prove it is - what it says it is (9ct or 18ct etc).

British Jewelry with a full UKHM (United Kingdom Hall Mark) is generally clearly stamped and readable after you clean it (check the website below for another complimentary article on 'How to Clean your Jewelry at Home').

Once you are aware of the marks, you will always feel just that little bit better when you buy that 'Could it be an Antique?' item at the local market, or from the guy in the Pub that everyone talks about but nobody knows.

Buyer Beware....

*Six marks on British Jewelry.*

Yes... Six?

# 1: The Maker's Mark (Usually some initials). Not all that important for everyday items, unless you want to collect Jewelry from one maker. Silver collectors may want to buy items from say, Bateman (I should be so lucky).

# 2: The second stamp is the Assay Office mark or 'Mark of Origin'. It tells you where the item came from. The most common is the LONDON Hallmark. A Leopard's Head. Sometimes this has a crown on the Leopard's Head (until circa 1821). Modern items do NOT have a crown on the Leopard Stamp.

The other most common Assay Office marks are from Birmingham (an Anchor). Once there were many Assay offices around Great Britain and Ireland, the Chester mark for instance. Now there are just three offices left in England, Sheffield being the last using a 'Rose' on gold Jewelry (DO NOT CONFUSE THIS WITH 'ROSE GOLD' JEWELRY) as that is a color, not a mark.

In Scotland there is Edinburgh, while in Ireland there is Dublin. Pity the poor Welsh are left out again!

# 3: The next is the Assay Quality mark and is shown as the 'Lion Passant' (which means 'looking ahead') and is a guarantee of quality. This was later changed to a 'CROWN' mark with a stamp showing the quality of Gold.... 9ct or 18ct etc.

# 4: Finally, and possibly the most important mark, was the Date letter mark. It changed each year so we can tell when the item was made.

Occasionally there is an extra mark.

# 5: An example was the Queen's Silver Jubilee in 1977.

Suffice to say if you see a Brooch with four or five marks and one of them is an Anchor with an 18 next to it and a letter 'C' next to that.... It's a safe bet it was made in Birmingham in 1927, or was that 1952, or 1902, or, or, or.....

Buyer Beware the man in the Pub.

As with most Jewelry items though, our advise has always been to buy the best QUALITY you can afford from a reputable dealer who will guarantee it.

Other than that, your plastic 10X eyeglass sure helps a lot....

(c)David Foard - All Rights reserved

David Foard has spent over 30 years in the Antique Jewelry Trade as a qualified gemologist and member of the Valuers Council. Get a FREE 3 part 'Hallmarking Report' on How to Identify your Jewelry Hallmarks at Home or Work by going to: http://www.online-jewelry-appraisals.com

Conflict Gems As Well.

2006-05-15T01:02:00.000-07:00

Here is a post from Aussie Saphire printed with their permission. It helps to show that Conflict Diamonds is just part of the world problem with precious stones.

Ethical gemstone purchasing
We recently received an email from an American dealer which brought into sharp focus the difficulties faced by miners worldwide who have to negotiate with buyers who are only interested in the cheapest price with no consideration of ethical and environmental issues. His approach to trade negotation involved insulting our character and the quality of our product (sight unseen), quoting an amazingly low price he claims to have paid for unspecified sapphire rough from Africa and asking if we could match the price which was significantly below our cost of production. While we lose no sleep over not being able to do business with people like this, it did make us think about ethics in the gemstone industry and how the lack of it hurts everyone except these dealers who profit from paying too little and charging too much.

Here at Aussie Sapphire, we operate a commercial sapphire mine in Australia - a country with a high level of government regulation and very high running costs. In some ways, this puts us at a competitive disadvantage to producers from developing countries. However, we take pride in being able to offer a high quality product at comparable prices with sound ethical and environmental production methods. The following article provides some discussion of these issues and relevant links for those who are interested in ethical gemstone purchasing. One link I would like to focus on at this point is this excellent field trip report by Vincent Pardieu from the AIGS laboratory in Thailand - An update on Ruby and Sapphire mining in South East Asia and East Africa - some of the photos in this article come from this report (see acknowledgements).

Tell Me About White Gold!

2006-05-04T16:54:00.000-07:00

Gold is yellow. There is no such thing as white gold. It simply doesn’t exist. When we talk about white gold what colour are we really describing? It certainly isn’t white like a sheet of paper is it. It is more of a silver colour!

Some people do not like the yellow colour of gold and they know that silver tarnishes so they don’t want that either. Well, there are alternatives nickel, platinum and palladium.

Platinum is the metal mainly used for high quality jewellery to get that bright silver colour. Why high quality? Because it is expensive, very, very expensive.

Just yesterday a lady asked me to repair her platinum engagement ring. The original solder join had split and she had lost a ruby accent stone. That ring had been worn everyday 24/7 for thirty six years. When I looked at it it did not have a mark on it, not a single visible scratch or any signs of wear. Now that ring in 18k gold would have had to have been remade perhaps twice in that period.

Platinum is a very hard metal and it polishes up with a mystifying high gloss look! Magnificent stuff! But it is simply too expensive.

In the 1920s white gold was invented. This is simply a mixture of other lighter coloured metals mixed with yellow gold. Nickel, platinum and palladium can be used. Nickel is toxic and is presently not used because it produces a rash on some skins.

So in simple terms white gold is a watered down version of gold with other bright silver looking metals mixed with it. Is there a problem with that? Yep!

That yellow gold base just wants to come through so the metal gets a tarnished yellow glow to it. Not really severe but just enough to spoil it.

Do we have a solution? Yep! We plate it with Rhodium! Holy smolley, so what we are doing is taking perfectly good gold, mixing with other metals (now it is called an alloy) and then plating it with another metal all for the sake of making it look a silver colour?
Yep, and it costs more and the plating will wear and will need to be done again in most cases!

Conflict Diamonds.

2006-04-24T00:53:00.000-07:00

That Diamond May Have Cost an Arm and a Leg!

Some time ago I came across an article published by Amnesty International discussing the concept of Conflict Diamonds. I tried very hard to get them to allow me to republish the item as I thought word of this should be common knowledge. For a bunch of brave people who risk their lives driving small inflatable boats around the bows of huge ships I thought it was incredible that they wouldn’t grant my wish to republish an article that could possibly help save lives!

So what does Conflict Diamonds mean? Perhaps this quote from a UN article expresses it most clearly:

“Conflict diamonds are diamonds that originate from areas controlled by forces or factions opposed to legitimate and internationally recognized governments, and are used to fund military action in opposition to those governments, or in contravention of the decisions of the Security Council.”

In simple terms what actually happens is that groups of people in some African countries are forced to labour to mine these diamonds. If they refuse this slave labour then often members of their family are mutilated by having limbs severed.

The profits from these “cheap” diamond sources are used to wage wars and create further suffering.

In September 2004 Amnestry International managed to get interested people across the USA to visit jewellery retailers and ask them what they knew and what policies they had in place regarding Conflict Diamonds. Amazingly, only 37% of the shops visited had, or claimed they had, any awareness of the issue.

It would be very sad to discover that the diamond you bought cheaply to celebrate your marriage was mined by slave labour under penalty of death and perhaps not just their own but that of their children.

It’s a very real issue!

What is 24 Carat Gold?

2006-04-19T03:48:00.000-07:00

The English poet John Donne wrote “Like gold to aery thinness beat ” when he was comparing the separation that he and his lover would soon have to partake in. He was suggesting that their love affair would not be a separation but rather just like gold it would be stretched almost indefinitely without breaking.

That’s what pure gold is like. I have heard that you can hammer it until it is so thin that you can see through it. I guess they didn’t mean you could watch television through it. It is unlike other metals in so many ways.

So what is 24 carat gold? Well, it is pure gold. Does it come out of the ground like that? Sometimes, but most times it is mixed up with other metals and minerals. So it needs to be refined a little to get rid of the other things we don’t want mixed up with it.

Is it the best for making jewellery? Heck no! It is too soft. It would get pushed out of shape and scratched and it is rather dull as well. So what do we do to make it into gold jewellery? Simple! We mix it with other metals to make it stronger, a different colour and cheaper!

Author: Gary Hocking who has his own website http:www.jewelleryexpress.com.au

Why is Made To Order Jewelry More Expensive?

2006-04-12T06:58:00.000-07:00

Why is Jewelry made to order more expensive?

A great question! The answer lies in the manufacturing and marketing. Let’s look at the type of jewelry in the shopping malls, stuff made for the mass market. These items are generally cheap but why?

Well, they are made for a specific market and to a price! Let’s say jewelry shops in the malls decide that an emerald ring in gold can be sold for $200.

They contact the wholesalers and ask if it can be supplied. Firstly, they know that a real emerald might not even be able to be bought for $200 so they decide to use created emeralds. Next, they know that they must use the cheapest yellow gold for their market 10K.

They then make the design. This is done by a designer who works with pen and paper and computers. This is often not some person who just thinks they have great ideas. This is a professional designer most likely with many years experience and perhaps a university degree in design. When the designer comes up with a design which is suitable for the expected clientele then it goes to manufacturing.

However, when the ring is made it just isn’t right so it’s back to design. After a redesign it gets manufactured again.

When it comes back from manufacturer it still isn’t right as the weight is too much and that would make the cost of manufacturer over budget.

You get the picture. It goes back and forth until all aspects are just right. Sometimes this may take as many as fifteen times before it is right. So it is a long process and that’s a huge amount of money for all that work.

What they have now is a design with a tiny created emerald to be made in a thin ring with the least amount of the cheapest gold possible – Don’t get me wrong, it is still going to be good quality but every component is minimum - otherwise it is not possible to make it and sell it for $200. These days you’ll find the back of the ring under the stone is hollowed out and this is solely to reduce the weight as gold is the big cost. A lot of people don’t like that but they like the look of the item and the cost.

Next, it is off to the cheapest manufacturing spot on the planet. These days that is probably China. The rings are made, not one at a time, but in batches of thousands at a time.

Now imagine that you walk into a manufacturing jeweler and tell him you want an emerald ring made. Here is the conversation:

You: “My name is Trudy and my grandmother always said that emeralds are the gemstones for me and so I want an emerald ring made.”

Jeweler: “That’s great Trudy! Do you have a design in mind?”

You: “Not really, but I like thick rings not those skinny bands that you see all the time. And I would like 18K white gold.” (This is the most expensive.)

Jeweler: Do you have the emerald yourself?

You: “No, I thought you could supply that.”

Jeweler: “Yes I can and the size and quality of the stone will play a big part. Do you have a budget in mind?

You: “Not really but I see them in the shops for $200 so around that figure somewhere…”

The jeweler is now thinking…well, that would nearly cover the cost price for the gold…and he is starting to lose interest big time!

Author: Gary Hocking

How To Make a Bracelet in less than 60 Seconds!

2006-03-30T20:07:00.000-08:00

This bracelet was poured in hot wax by using a Matt Wax gun. It was poured around a plastic bottle using red wax. The whole thing took less than a minute and then it was off to casting. When it came back this is the result. I haven't polished it, filed it or anything. It was cast in a special Sterling Silver which doesn't tarnish like the normal Sterling.

What a fun thing to make and a fun thing to wear. I make rings this way as well.

How To Carve a Wax Model for Jewelry Making

2006-03-24T20:16:00.000-08:00

If you are interested in making jewelry or knowing how it is often made then you may like my article How to Carve a Wax Model for Jewellery Making.

Just go to www.opaljewelryexpress.com/category17_1.htm
Or, click on the title above. It's free and you can even copy it. Comments and questions are most welcome!

Jewellery Made To Order

2006-03-24T19:10:00.000-08:00

Hello,

My name is Gary Hocking and I design and make jewelry for people all over the world. I live in Australia and operate web sites to sell my jewelry and publish worthwhile information.