I Made A 24K Gold Ring From The Earth!

in this video I'll be attempting something that  I've never done before and that is making a ring   out of pure 24 karat gold in fact 2022 has been  a year of many firsts for me in April I finally   attended the annual Jewelers bench workshop at  stuller the largest jewelry manufacturer in North   America and the highlight of the trip might have  been when they took me on a private tour of their   Metals facility so much gold being in Louisiana  this was also my first time traveling to the South   and I'm happy to report that southern hospitality  is very much real in June I traveled to Las Vegas   and attended jck the largest jewelry conference in  America with 30 000 Jewelers in attendance I have   a video on that if you want more details in the  fall I was invited to give my first ever webinar   where I spoke about my creative process using 3D  printing and last month a first that kind of sets   the stage for this entire video meeting in person  and collaborating with another YouTube channel   these lovely people here are a family that run  on a channel called gridlessness and as the name   implies they do a lot of off-gridding activities  like being literal homesteaders living off the   land and all the adventures that that entails and  although it's quite a different lifestyle than   mine there is one thing that brings us together  gold although we're still not quite the same I   usually just order my gold from a Refinery whereas  with gridlessness well they literally mind their   own gold yeah that's right they spent hours and  days off of a remote River in British Columbia   and they mine together as a family collecting  gram by gram until they had enough saved up to   make something special for each one of them I was  honored of course when they reached out and kind   of asked for help to like make rings with the  special gold they collected they stopped by my   shop in California and I helped them craft their  own rings out of their own gold their whole family   is so talented it kind of just felt like a bunch  of little apprentices running around the shop and   I really was surprised at how quickly they took  to jewelry making that video by the way just went   live on the gridlessness YouTube channel as well  as prior videos showing them doing the mining and   so forth so I highly recommend you go watch those  videos the Rings we all made were alloyed to 18   karat which is a safe bet for daily wear but  they still had a lot of gold left over pure 24   karat gold now normally I'm not making rings in 24  Karat due to just how soft gold is in its natural   state but everyone got a ring except for Jeff and  well he really wanted an easy way to carry around   the Gold without fear of it getting lost on their  trip so here we go my last first of the year it's   time to make a ring out of pure 24 karat gold  now we're starting with 21.4 grams and my goal   is to keep the finished ring as close to this as  possible now normally that doesn't matter to me   much because I just refine and recycle gold that  gets kind of left behind but in this case this   is all the gold that they mined and I want to make  sure as much of it as possible gets into this ring now I'm giving my crucible a fresh  glazing and this will help the gold   sort of float around in the crucible  after it melts it won't stick to it and   it will hopefully easily pour into my Ingot mold now before I pour the gold into the Ingot I  want to make sure that the Ingot mold itself   is preheated you know this can either be done  by putting the Ingot mold in like a kiln or an   oven but in this case I'm just using my  torch to gradually heat it up over time next it's time to melt down  this beautiful 24 Karat that fresh glaze is really doing a good  job as the gold Glides Around The Crucible   and here we go pouring it into the Ingot mold now success but look at that little piece of  gold there on the rim of the entrance to   the Ingot mold you know normally that  wouldn't bother me but in this case   I mean we're talking about people who  spent a lot of time Gathering that gold   so I'll make sure to collect that  and return it to gridlessness and there it is a beautiful round Ingot that I  will put into my Rolling Mill which will shape   it into the right length and thickness  that I need as well as the right shape   I'm going for a comfort fit shape and this is  a little bit different of a project so normally   when I'm doing the rolling I don't care if  there's a little bit of excess metal because   that just gets recycled and I use it in future  projects for this one however I don't want there   to be any excess metal I want to use as much of  it as possible so in that case I'm keeping very   close attention to the length of this piece  of gold here I want to make sure that I don't   have to add or subtract material later on in the  process I want to get just the right measurements I use these calipers to make sure that  everything is looking good with the   width of my piece of gold and the length  especially to get the finger size right once I'm happy with the piece that I've  rolled out I'm going to use this really   handy tool I got from Pepe tools which is  basically a metal bender for making Rings   it's really nice when working with  super thick pieces of gold like this   and full disclosure Pepe tools did send me this  ring bender and the Rolling Mill last year if   you want to check out their products I'll  leave a link down in the description below so I continue bending the gold until I have  almost a circular shape now like I said   previously I am doing things a bit differently  normally I would overlap the gold here and then   run my saw blade directly through creating a  beautiful nice flush seam and sort of cutting   off the excess gold that's overlapping however  in this case I don't want there to be any excess   gold right so I'm just bringing the ends as  close as I can together they will need to   be cleaned up but at least I won't have quite  as much gold excess as I would have otherwise so the ends of this piece of gold are pretty  mangled I will need to take a saw blade and cut   off the smallest little sliver here and of course  saving it because I'll never look at gold the same   way normally I would just kind of discard it and  save it for another day but just knowing how much   work went into getting this gold is making  me realize that I want to save every piece using some ring bending pliers  I will then go ahead and seal   off the ring as flush as I can in  preparation to soldering it together now another interesting challenge about doing  this project is you can't actually solder 24   Karat with itself or with 24 Karat because  basically what will happen is the ring will   want to kind of just melt before the seam closes  up so basically what I need to do is I need to add   a lower carrot solder I got the highest carrot  I could find which is 22 karat and I'm really   hoping that the color will be close enough  that it will be pretty much indistinguishable now the amount of solder I'm using is so minimal  that it will be a fraction of a percent of the   overall mass of the Ring like so minimal if Purity  is truly the most important thing and not even the   slightest bit of any other lower carrot some  potential workarounds would be to cast this   ring in 24 Karat which I don't really do 24 Karat  casting ever and then another potential solution   is to do laser welding something else that is on  my bucket list and as far as tools to get in my   shop they're very expensive so for now we're just  going to use a very small amount of 22 karat and   then we're going to file off any of the excess  that's on top of the Ring and now that I look   at it the color actually matches very beautifully  and after the ring cools I will use this grinding   wheel on a flex shaft to remove any of the excess  solder being careful not to remove any of the 24   Karat material and throwing it on the mandrel I  can tell that the ring is too big and of course   I don't want to cut into it so I'm going to go  with my very special tool and that being this   ring compressor and ring stretcher it's actually  perfect for sizing Rings unless you have stones   in your ring of course you can never use this  tool if you have diamonds or anything in your   rings because they will shatter they will pop  out they will be absolutely destroyed but for   projects like this I can easily compress the  ring right down to the perfect size I need and   the best part of all is that no material will be  removed at all the ring retains all of its gold throwing it on the mandrel I can see here  that I am now down to the perfect size 10.   so now that I'm back at my Jeweler's Bench  I'm into the home stretch here and basically   my goal now is to really make the ring nice  and uniform remove any tool marks any surface   scratches basically just try to get it to  look really nice while retaining as much   metal as possible I know I keep hammering  that point home but I will be weighing   this ring at the end of this video just to  see how good I did at retaining that metal   and you know I really have to thank gridlessness  for this opportunity because normally you know I'd   be cutting off metal I'd be falling into my bench  pan I'd be refining it recycling it it's almost   like gold has become pretty commonplace for me  just not quite as exciting and doing this project   it almost like somehow brings its value back  to the Forefront of my mind which is pretty fun I just love how this ring feels in my  hands like it just has so much weight to it   and despite the ring being really heavy I'm  super glad that we decided to do comfort fit   on this ring because it's going to have less  surface area on the inside of the Ring touching   your finger basically the outer edges are tapered  and domed so that when you slide the ring on your   finger it's only making contact in the middle  thus not feeling quite as tight and heavy as a   ring that's only flat on the inside hopping over  to the polishing machine now I will use a flat lap   to crisp up the sides of this ring then I'll hop  on over to the inside ring finger this will polish   up at the inside and that comfort fit I was just  talking about to make it nice and smooth and shiny and the last challenge I was noticing with  this project was I was kind of having a hard   time bringing the ring to a mirror finish  something about it being pure 24 karat gold   I think it would have been possible if I kept  polishing it however I just know like within   a day or two or even a week of wearing this  ring it's gonna start to dull out again to that   beautiful natural 24 Karat look so I wasn't too  concerned about making it a mirror finish I just   wanted to brighten it up as much as I could while  retaining as much of the metal as I possibly could   overall I'm very happy with how it turned out just looks and feels wonderful   into the Ultrasonic Cleaner I will get all of the  residue off and then steam off any of the compound I just can't stop throwing this thing  around just love love love the weight and there we have it one 24 karat  ring Jeff and I happen to be the   same size so I hope he doesn't mind just  going to go ahead and model this thing you know I don't know if I want to give it  back almost as if the ring is speaking to me calling me my   precious but then I remembered I have  to weigh the ring so let's go ahead and   check this out 20.5 grams but once I add  the little pieces that I had to cut off   we're at exactly 21 Grams and we started at 21.4  so we lost 0.4 grams which is a little sad but   also inevitable I don't really know how I could  have done any better than that I'm actually pretty   happy with the result of ending up at 21 Grams  thank you everyone for tuning in to this video   I wish you a happy New Year and I cannot wait to  show you what I have in store for 2023 take care [Music]

Channel: Modern Goldsmith

Views: 575,444

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Id: Bd1-KrRb6SY

Length: 14min 1sec (841 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 31 2022