Gold fuming

[Bakerman44]

So I've been practicing silver fuming quite a bit and I think I'm ready to give gold fuming a shot. I want to donate a piece to a charity auction so I need to get some gold in town instead of ordering it. I remember a thread where someone said to get gold BB's from a jeweler. I couldn't find the type of gold I needed from my searches.

What kind of gold do I need to ask for? Also, how much gold needs to go on the glass rod? about 1 gram? 1mm sized ball?

Thanks for the help as always!

Justin

[gmkcpa]

Use pure gold, or 24 carat, although some people say they prefer 22 carat. As to how much to put on the end of your punty, look at the hole in the small 'o' - you want to use a piece that will fit into the hole in the 'o'. Gold goes a lot further than silver, but the smaller piece of gold also tends to get imbedded in the punty easier than the silver. And fume it in a slightly oxydizing flame, as opposed to silver, which you fume in a reducing flame.

[Bakerman44]

cool thanks for the info! I'm headed to the jewelers soon and ill post pics of the results!

[swamper]

In a pinch you can gold fume with a rod of Rubino.

[Bakerman44]

just out of curiosity, what effects come differently from pure, 24k, 22k? I'm going for the pinks

[gmkcpa]

I bought a little package of gold droplets from ABR 2-3 years ago. I'm almost positive it was .9999 pure. I'm still using it (I don't fume too much). Boy, does it give me pink! The end of the punty I use to hold it is totally pink. I did an implosion about a year ago using a little of the gold and a little of the silver and I got flourescent green! That marble I did with a 3/4"Simax clear rod, although I'm pretty sure that the 5mm rod of clear I used to put my dots on the maria (covering the gold and silver fume) was from a case I had bought from Wale Apparatus about 15 years ago, so I think that 5mm rod was pyrex. I know that there are other threads here that talk about using different brands of glass to get different results from fuming, but I'm not looking to spend more on different brands of clear; I'm at the point with my supply of clear and color that 'enough is enough'

[Cosmo]

22k gold works better than 24k. You get the same colors, but 22k sticks to the fuming rod better and the fume adheres to the glass better.

All of them give you pinks, but if you back it with a dark color it becomes gold. If the piece is left transparent, it appears pink (or if you put white behind it).

[menty666]

And the little tiny pieces you were wondering about are called "casting grain" A local jeweler might eye you suspiciously if you ask if they have any, but if you explain what you're going to do with it they might relax a little and put the shotgun down.

I have a small piece of gold wire out in my shop. Two actually, I lost one...it was like..wait for it...trying to find a needle in a glass stack. HA!

Seriously though, I did lose some, that sucked.

[Bakerman44]

I went to see a jeweler i have bought from before and he gave me (at cost) this from one of his casting veins. He just sawed off what he thought was a gram (ended up being 1.2 grams) and rolled it thin for me so i could cut it. I can't wait to try it out tomorrow!

[Bakerman44]

Originally Posted by Cosmo

22k gold works better than 24k. You get the same colors, but 22k sticks to the fuming rod better and the fume adheres to the glass better.

All of them give you pinks, but if you back it with a dark color it becomes gold. If the piece is left transparent, it appears pink (or if you put white behind it).

Thanks interesting. I could have gotten both i guess to try them out...i was told with my cheetah to just crank up the secondary oxy valve and fume that way. i guess ill see if i know what im doing tomorrow!

[Bakerman44]

Originally Posted by menty666

And the little tiny pieces you were wondering about are called "casting grain" A local jeweler might eye you suspiciously if you ask if they have any, but if you explain what you're going to do with it they might relax a little and put the shotgun down.

I have a small piece of gold wire out in my shop. Two actually, I lost one...it was like..wait for it...trying to find a needle in a glass stack. HA!

Seriously though, I did lose some, that sucked.

yeah, i figured i would sound really sketch if i didn't open up with a "im a glass artist and need some gold for one of my pieces" anyway, the owner of the shop and his employees were pretty impressed with some of my silver fumed pics i had on my cell phone. they told me to come back in when i use their gold in a piece. but the piece the sold me they sold to me at market price with no markup to them. they are great people at this store.

sorry you lost one of your wires!!! but nice glass stack joke..i LOL'd

[LampworkbyLori]

You can crumple up a section of a piece of gold leaf, too.

[Bakerman44]

so what type of flame burns off the gold? just heat? oxy/reduce?

[gmkcpa]

Why would you want to burn off the gold?

[Bakerman44]

same reason you burn off silver. after you trap it you want the rest of it gone. but i've heard reducing removes the gold.i forget where, but maybe it was something on youtube or an article

[Bakerman44]

is this gold? ive used super oxy, slightly oxy, and neutral flame. also my holding rod isn't turning pink and nothing is sticking to the glass. before i go raise hell, I'd like to get yalls opinion on what this is exactly. I dont think the gold should be changing color like this when heated. I only heated the ribbon i had to show you guys what happens to the gold when it got hot. the grayish/black is all i got on the end of the rod too.

[Cosmo]

Originally Posted by Bakerman44

is this gold? ive used super oxy, slightly oxy, and neutral flame. also my holding rod isn't turning pink and nothing is sticking to the glass. before i go raise hell, I'd like to get yalls opinion on what this is exactly. I dont think the gold should be changing color like this when heated. I only heated the ribbon i had to show you guys what happens to the gold when it got hot. the grayish/black is all i got on the end of the rod too.

I'm not an expert on metals, but that looks like gold that isn't pure. The other metals are turning black. 22 or 24k gold doesn't discolor like that.

[gmkcpa]

After I fume with a piece of gold it looks exactly the same as before I fumed with it. And I'm using .99999 gold.

[Kalera]

Originally Posted by Bakerman44

is this gold? ive used super oxy, slightly oxy, and neutral flame. also my holding rod isn't turning pink and nothing is sticking to the glass. before i go raise hell, I'd like to get yalls opinion on what this is exactly. I dont think the gold should be changing color like this when heated. I only heated the ribbon i had to show you guys what happens to the gold when it got hot. the grayish/black is all i got on the end of the rod too.

Looks like 14kt. You need at least 22kt purity.

[chayes]

the gold panned down in the river works.

[Bakerman44]

thanks everyone. They must have got their gold confused. i'm going to share my findings with them and hopefully get a refund or an exchange

[vargdogg]

good... im curious of the outcome

[Bakerman44]

ok. so here's the deal. that DEF is not gold. I got in some gold drops from ABR today. I'm taking the results to the jewler tomorrow. getting my money back..or the real thing.. i really don't care which.

now, funny story. I just made a $20 mistake. put too much gold on the rod (one of the 3 drops that came from my $55 order, before shipping). got it hot it started fuming almost like magic (and i say magic after spending an entire day trying to fume whatever that ribbon of gold was and getting nothing). then PLOP...all my gold rolled off right on to my galvanized top and splattered like bird poop. no scraping up this stuff. expensive lesson learned.

im going to hammer these remaining two beads flat and cut smaller pieces and add as i see fit. but..im pretty pleased with my first "real" gold fuming experience. i only got a faint pink before it fell off..but i'm just so happy about having the real deal now that i just don't know how to contain myself.if i didn't have other stuff to do tonight, i'd be out there making magic happen

[menty666]

I'd still say scratch up what you can; you can send it to the reclaimers for a credit on more. The jewelry folks save their dust and send it back.

[Frit Diva]

Baker~

Since many jewelers do not alloy their own metal, they will think "casting grain" just means the purity of metal they normally cast with, which they are probably purchasing pre-alloyed to 12 or 14 K. If he sold you a casting off-cut (like a sprue or vein which is a leftover after casting) it is not only not 22 or 24, it is oxidized scrap gold, which wouldn't even be useful for casting again unless mixed with a higher purity metal. I'm not saying he was being dishonest, it sounds like he just really didn't understand what you needed.
Glad to hear the drops from ABR are working well for you!

Jo

[Bunyip]

Another note - gold wire is a good way to go, rather than casting grains. You can add as much or as little gold as you need to your fuming rod by just touching it to the tip of the molten rod, and moving it very close to the flame until it melts. Remember to use pliers to hold the wire though, those suckers get got! (I think the wire was around $10.00 per inch, but an inch goes a long way if you use it right <assume dirty joke was inserted here despite my restraint>)

I've used wire, foil and leaf for my fuming metals, and by far wire has been the easiest to manage. Casting grains, I haven't used but I'd had bits and pieces fall off the end of my fuming rod so I think I understand some of the inherent issues there as well.

Another suggestion: Use a saturated WYSIWYG colored rod rather than clear for your fuming rod. Avoid crayons, but maybe a short piece of dark cobalt or onyx or similar rather than a striking color or one with lots of metals which might add their own flavor to the fume. Most colors are a bit stiffer than clear so the metals don't sink into them as easily - a particularly useful tip with silver as gold doesn't seem to give me the same nightmares as silver has...

[gmkcpa]

Bunyip - my wife and I made the assumption and had a good laugh. Thanks.

[e. mort]

Originally Posted by Bakerman44

ok. so here's the deal. that DEF is not gold. I got in some gold drops from ABR today. I'm taking the results to the jewler tomorrow. getting my money back..or the real thing.. i really don't care which.

now, funny story. I just made a $20 mistake. put too much gold on the rod (one of the 3 drops that came from my $55 order, before shipping). got it hot it started fuming almost like magic (and i say magic after spending an entire day trying to fume whatever that ribbon of gold was and getting nothing). then PLOP...all my gold rolled off right on to my galvanized top and splattered like bird poop. no scraping up this stuff. expensive lesson learned.

im going to hammer these remaining two beads flat and cut smaller pieces and add as i see fit. but..im pretty pleased with my first "real" gold fuming experience. i only got a faint pink before it fell off..but i'm just so happy about having the real deal now that i just don't know how to contain myself.if i didn't have other stuff to do tonight, i'd be out there making magic happen

Yeah, I have had this happen too. I have lots of pretty gold dots on my stainless steel bench top. However, you can get most of it up if you use the blade from a box cutter type utility knife and scrape it like you would if you were trying to get a bumper sticker off your back window. Now, I always keep my graphite pad under my torch when I fume.

[Frit Diva]

Bunyip.. thanks for the tip on colored rod instead of clear! I also use wire rather than casting grain for fuming, it is soooo much easier to control how much metal you are using up. You can also make a divit in the end of your rod, cut off a very short bit of wire and set it in the divit to melt if you want more control over how much gold you are burning up.

Jo