colored gold

[qndrgnsdd]

15 carat blue gold: fine gold .625; fine silver.250; pure nickle .125 OR in english (Troy) 12 dwt 12 grains fine gold, 5 dwt fine silver, 2dwt 12 grains pure nickle. How about pale violet .917 fine gold .083 pure aluminum. Blue-grey gold .750 fine gold, .250 iron. Now before y'all get excited and go wasting gold on these alloys to use for inlay let me say that they are all hard and/or very brittle.
Since you don't have to worry about stamping laws for the metals you use for inlay you can find the most malleable alloy. I don't see any reason that a gold-copper alloy with just enough copper to make it pink should work harden any faster than than pure copper. I'm not very experienced in the inlay department, but I have used a gold-copper 14K alloy for a red gold bracelet that was amazingly soft and malleable, and only .585 gold content. So take pure gold and add copper to it in very small doses until the desired color is reached and it should inlay just fine without needing a backing plate. Don't add any other metal just pure oxy-free copper. I can't see a reason why it would work harden any faster than the copper in the alloy. The formulas for the colored golds are from a 1927 book by George E. Gee

www.walkergoldsmiths.com

 

[pilkguns]

Wowwwwww the things you learn on this forum. I have been searching for blue gold formula for almost 20 years on 3 continents, I literally spent over $200 on long distance phone calls back in the day when calls where more expensive and no one knew, but call this guy and he might. I called England France, Germany and Australia plus all over the US. Now boom here it is. Now I will have to go try some... Are there any directionss for mixing it. First one hold at so many degrees then ad. ??... we tried the iron mix, but all we got was a crumbly mess.

As for the pink golds, my experience as I said in the other thread, it makes no difference whether you are usiing 2k, 6k, 10k, 14k, 18k, or 22k, they all go hard jsut as fast and have nearly the same color. there is a difference in color, but not enough to get excited about.

 

[Daniel Houwer]

Coloured gold is fancy indeed.
I have to make the purple gold for my employer next week.
Though I have my reservations about it.
I am not sure what health heazard it wil be mixing pure aluminium with 0.2165 gram to 1 of pure pure gold
What I know about coloured gold is that most of the fancy colours are just a skindeep surface treatment. They are indeed very brittle and have to be used as a gem rather then as forgable metal.

I am very curious though, where to get the right formula's or 1927 book by George E. Gee.
Untracht has some formula's to but I believe they are the brittle ones.

The google search for purple gold or blue gold and coloured gold show mainly onforgeble alloys. Does anyone know of forgable coloured alloys out of the normal ones?

 

[qndrgnsdd]

Scott, do you know all the components of the alloy or were they from a commercial metals house?

 

[qndrgnsdd]

Daniel as far as I know all of these exotic alloys are very brittle.....O

 

[pilkguns]

Owen, I don't recall the alloys now, the goldsmith mixing them had some standard formulas and we varied them to get the different carat values. We were also trying it copper and gold only , as well as the normal mix, which ( I think) was some silver? Actually this was back in 1991, when I was trying to do a 50th anniversary Pearl Harbor theme knife with the Rising Sun flag behind green gold Kate on the opposite side of this picture. Unfortunately I don;t have any photos fo the flag side.

 

[vanknife]

This link may be of interrest

http://www.canadajewels.com/pages/whitegold.htm

Cheers

"VAN"

 

[rodstan]

To quote from Gees Goldsmithing Handbook
Blue Gold 15 dwts fine gold, 5 dwts Iron Charcoal.
"It is best prepared in the mixture by dipping iron wire not too thick into the molten gold, which should be well covered with charcoal flux--and this is one of the most important points of its preparation--to prevent oxidation.The iron used, of which charcoal is by far the best in producing homogeneous alloys with gold, should be quite clean and free from oxide before adding it to the gold.It may be cleansed by dipping for a very short time in weak sulphuric acid pickle and afterward well rinsed and dried;or, secondly, well emery clothed until it has become perfectly bright.The right quantity of iron should the be added to the gold in the crucible at the proper moment, little by little, until the specified quality of lower alloy required has been reached.This alloy is then to be cast, hammered well down the narrow edges,annealed, again hammered, and again annealed in order to make it tough.
Gold and iron easily combine in almost any proportion, providing the heat given to cause the fusion has been great enough; gold facilitates the fusion of iron,hence it is that iron should always be made an addition to the fused gold in preparing its composition."
Use and interperet as you wish, it is a direct quote from Gees 1880 second edition that I have before me.
Regards from down under,
Rod

 

[DanM]

The Japanese have had a malliable purple gold for a number of years.Steven Kretchmer worked with many different processes ,his early purple gold was nice color but very brittle.The "Jeweler's Bench Reference" by Harold O'Connor has many formulas for the basic shades of pink,white, yellow,and green gold of different karats.link to basic colored gold.

http://www.gold.org/jewellery/technology/colours/special.html