Sterling Silver Jewelry with cheap price
Q.Well, I have to ask.....why can I not just melt a silver bar and use that silver in jewelry making.....just asking......thanks
A.You can certainly do this if you want, but depending on the results you wish, and the metal the bar is made of, there are aspects of this you may not be aware of if you've not got much experience in doing this. First, I'd bet your silver bar, if it's the usual die struck decorative (etc) silver ingot, is made of fine, or pure, silver. Most silver jewelry is made of sterling silver or another such silver alloy which has some other metal, most often copper, added to it to harden it up a bit. So if you melt down a fine silver ingot, and use the metal as is, you get fine silver jewelry, not sterling silver jewelry. Fine silver has it's uses, especially in enamelling, but it's softer than sterling silver, and the results may not be what you expect. Also, it's important to be aware, when melting fine silver, that it has an enormous ability to dissolve oxygen from the atmosphere. This doesn't hurt it, per se, but it then comes back out of solution as the metal solidifies after being melted, which can often cause major problems with porosity in the solidifed metal, unless considerable cautions are taken, while melting, to exclude atmospheric oxygen from the silver melt. It's harder to do than melting sterling silver, since with sterling, the copper scavenges some of that excess oxygen, and then, at least with molten sterling, slags off, helping to keep the melt relatively cleaner. Also, sterling silver melts at a substantially lower temperature, making it easier to melt, and it melts over a temperature range, rather than all at once at a single temperature as does pure silver. This makes it much easier to obtain solid structurally sound cast metal, than with fine silver, which tends to porosity and shrinkage cavities in the castings. If your bars are fine silver, and you wish sterling silver, then add copper as you melt the metal. The total composition of the total weight of the melt should be 92.5 percent silver and 7.5 percent copper. Electrical copper wire is an easily found source of high purity copper if you want. To melt the two together, melt the copper first with about an equal amount of silver, stirring/mixing the melting metals together until the copper is completely dissolved. Them melt this with the rest of the silver. In both cases, be sure to use a proper melting flux, usually boric acid, or a mix of boric acid and borax, to protect the surface of the melting metal. The above assumes that you're intending to produce cast jewelry, or otherwise cast forms. It's also valid if you've got the tools to draw wire or roll sheet metal, but from experience, I'd note that getting good quality sterling silver sheet metal from ingots you pour yourself is harder than it would seem. Sterling is prone to oxidation enough that getting a really good clean ingot is quite tricky. Your end sheet metal is quite likely to have some good areas, and some flawed areas. Don't expect to get resulting sheet metal that's the equal of commercially produced silver sheet metal. Wire works better, especially when you use the closed type of ingot molds that produce a long narrow bar from being poured into one end, rather than the open groove type of wire mold (these molds work fine with golds, especially higher carats, but not so well with silver). Witn wire, even when the ingot has flaws, the resulting flaws tend to become centered in the wire as you draw it, so though the wire may not be perfect, it's often still quite usable. Flaws in silver sheet usually form blisters/bubbles the first time you heat the metal to anneal or solder it. And of course, if you have fine silver bars, and want fine silver sheet metal, just roll the bars out as is, without another melting operation. So then. Still ready to just melt and use your existing silver bars? One other factor to consider... Silver is cheap. The bars are sold at full market price for the silver, and often a bit over for the nicer bars. They're easy to sell in that form. Silver sheet metal and wire stock is more costly, but not really so when you consider all the work and cost that goes into changing the raw metal into usable sheet metal and wire. The commercial refiners are experts at this, doing it very well and efficiently. If you compare costs to buy ready made sheet metal and wire vs the cost in time to make it yourself, you may find that their prices are very reasonable. For my part, I do both. For pieces that are to be final, "real" pieces of jewelry, I always use commercially produced silver sheet metal. Wire I might buy if the piece needs a lot, but I usually make my own wire. I often use silver not for finished real pieces, but also for models, intended only to be used as masters for rubber molds, which are then cast in gold (or silver when needed). For these, a perfect final polish isn't needed, and a bit of oxidation or flaws in the metal often don't get in the way, and in fact even the alloy need not be exactly sterling silver, so even scrap contaminated with solder is uasable for some model making purposes. Thus I'm not reluctant to make small amounts of silver sheet metal for model making. It's a good way to use up scraps. And for those instances where I might need fine silver sheet metal, I'll happily roll out a commercially stamped silver ingot instead of going and buying commercial fine silver sheet. Usually I only need smaller amounts, so placing an order for the commercial sheet may be too much to bother with compared with the small effort in rolling an ingot, if I've got one around, to the thickness I might need. I usually don't try to pour my own fine silver ingots though. Like I said, fine silver can be difficult to pour a good ingot from.
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