Melting old gold to make new

[susieq]

I have a solid victorian rose gold 9ct bracelet which I bought many blue moons ago and which I haven't worn in a long time. It's such a beautiful rich red colour gold that I thought I would like to melt it down and use it in my own projects rather than selling it on as scrap. It would also mean that I could keep the sentimental value of one of my first jewellery purchases!

I have watched a few videos on youtube, etc., but am not confident in doing this myself and there's the outlay on the additional equipment I would need to consider too.

Does anyone know if there is anywhere I could get this done, what sort of charge there would be and whether I could be confident to get back what I had sent!

If I were to do it myself, would I need to cut out all the soldered parts of the links? In the videos they seem to just put everything in together, but surely I wouldn't want the solder to be mixed in with the gold?

Thanks

S

[bruggen]

If faced with the same question, I would talk to Peter or Giles at Vipa Designs in Melton, I do know that they cast using customers metal but I am pretty sure that they have to add some new metal to it, it can be done though as far as I know, so carve a bit of wax and enjoy your new unique piece. Sorry if it's a bit vague but good luck.

[susieq]

Thanks for the suggestion. I have contacted them to see whether they can turn it into a small ingot for me.

S

[medusa]

apologies for the old bump, but I've got a few broken gold chains that I'd like to recycle for my braille tags I make, but don't know if I can. Because they are fairly modern (20 or so years old) I'm assuming that they won't have soldered links, but I have no idea how they make chain commercially and don't want to end up with so much % of solder in the mix. any ideas or should I just scrap it? Ebay people are paying insane prices for scrap it seems!