AboutThomas Expertise Have a question about jewelry repair or working with gold or silver jewelry and gemstones? I am a working professional bench jeweler, involved everyday with setting stones in mountings, designing and making jewelry, repairing and some custom manufacture. Over 30 years experience. If you work with jewelry as a hobby or as a profession, I might be able to help. I deal with the retail business, not mass production. Ask privately if you wish. See the box for that: It keeps your question between us. Please DO NOT ask MAKER'S MARKS, but metal quality marks are fine to ask. Please DO NOT ask diamond prices. See a gemologist for that.
Experience Education is English/Physics!Started in human resources, to advertising, to jewelry...wow, what a road. Now a jeweler for many years. I have had formal training in jewelry work and many shared experiences with top grade jewelers. We just never know were we will go or be. Follow your best, your dreams, with some discretion!
Expert: Thomas Date: 5/16/2008 Subject: white gold cracks!
Question Hello Thomas,
For the last year i worked with yellow gold, silver, red gold, but recently i start to work with white gold, with 2 different kinds of alloy, one, silver and palladium and the other just 33% palladium, the problem is that my white gold always cracks, when i am laminating or working with it in any form (square wire, etc) it cracks! and very deeply, so deeply that i cant remove it with my file set...so please i don't know what to do know, can you help me? i have to make a white gold ring and i am scared....:( excuse my English ...writing from Peru!
Answer Sandra, I am back. Your English is excellent. : )
I am back and am not certain if I can truly answer your question without seeing the actual work, how you might form the metal, if you make your own wire by melting the metal and how you are annealing the metal and cooling the metal after annealing heat is removed.
White gold alloys are well known by jewelers to cause problems with cracking and splits when the metal is rolled or otherwise formed. Generally, cast items present much fewer problems than white gold formed by pouring and ingot and then forming to wire or sheet. Generally, the problem appears to be in two factors: Is the alloy suitable for milling and forming. Is the alloy damaged by too quick cooling or too long a cooling time. Either of the last will lead to cracks in milling and forming. If the metal is going to crack, these breaks appear rather quickly in the working of the metal and there is little which can be done to correct the problems.
The basic advice is this: Be certain the metal is not contaminated by other metals and that the metal is fresh, not metal reused several times. When softening by annealing, the general rule is to heat to a low red heat and allow the red to go away then quench. Note that some white gold should be quenched hot but most is quenched to cool just as the red goes away when viewed in low light.
If the problem is with white gold in general, the above advice may help but it is impossible for me to give a direct answer without actually seeing the entire process as you do it.
If the problem is with the palladium white gold alloy you are using, I have hit an unknown area. You see, palladium white gold alloys generally contain at the maximum 25% palladium. With a 35% alloy and gold I have no idea how the metal will work or what problems it may present.
Metals trick us. We would believe adding more palladium will make the alloy more workable, more malleable. This is not always the case as the jewelry industry has discovered over the past couple of years in trying to promote palladium as a jewelry metal. I am talking now about palladium and not palladium white gold. With much fanfare the industry promoted palladium jewelry as a less costly substitute and lighter weight metal than platinum. Unfortunately, many experienced manufacturers discovered that the correct alloy of palladium was not easy to discover. Casting often led to less than desired castings. One of the most marketed sellers of platinum, high karat gold and palladium engagement rings used what is reported as a 950 palladium/ iridium alloy. We found out quickly there was something wrong with the metal or the casting methods used. A ring was to be resized and when the sides were bent, the metal simply snapped in two pieces! This is supposed to be a very workable metal but it was totally brittle. You see, I say all of this to let you know that what is in the particular alloy is vital to whether the metal will be workable or not workable. This last advice includes palladium white gold. How the metal is melted and formed in the first place is very important. Palladium will behave like a sponge when hydrogen gas is present, from a flame or from water in the air. The gas goes into the metal and causes problems which can lead to brittle metal. The higher the palladium content, I suspect the more likely is the metal to absorb hydrogen from the air when melted in the open air.
I will make a suggestion which may help you much more than I possibly can. I will send you to an expert in the refining business to speak directly to him. This man is named Daniel Ballard and is with a refining company in California, USA. There is below a phone number but from Peru the email may be your best option. The company is named Precious Metals West and is proven to be very innovative in developing new metal products. Daniel is very, very helpful and will speak to you. He works with metals every day and will have knowledge I do not have. I certainly have no experience with palladium gold with 35% palladium.
These links are copy and paste since that is how allexperts does it. The website is worth visiting and there are videos of some of the work being done and a blog link.
The email for Daniel Ballard is also below.
I very much wish I could give you a simple answer to the cracking in the metal. The things said above about white gold cover most of it but this does not solve your problem. One possibility is to form the metal only slightly, look very closely for any signs of cracks. If you see cracks, heat the metal with a good flux covering and with flame on the cracks allow the metal to melt into itself. This will heal the crack but reforming is needed since the shape is altered. If the cracking is from the alloy used, even healing the crack will not solve the problems totally. You would be getting new cracks and repeating the process over and over and not get the metal into a jewelry form!
I have tried my best here but there is so much unknown. Do avoid carbon with the white gold since that can sometimes cause problems. This means melt in something other than charcoal or carbon crucible. Allow air cooling to just below red prior to cooling the metal. Too quick a cool will guarantee cracking in most white gold alloys.
Sandra,thank you very much for the question. The best advice I have is to email to the address given and ask directly, letting him know the metal causing the problems, how you melt it and how you anneal it.
God Bless and Peace. Thomas. May 16, 2008 7:45PM
---------------------------------------------------------------------Sandra, I appreciate the question. I will have to check some information which is at my work place before I can answer and perhaps make a phone call to a refiner I know.
White gold alloys are sensitive to changes and I will look into it.
As soon as I can get some good answer for you, I will answer the question. I hope to do that tomorrow. Fair enough?
