Hi everyone,

Just thought I would say hello and explain a bit about myself and my reasons for joining this forum... My name is Ian and I turned 40 last week, I am married and have two teenage kids.
I work as a maintenance manager,I enjoy doing anything practical and have always loved metal work (one of my hobbies is knife making as well as collecting and working Whitby jet). I have always had a fascination with gold and have collected various bits over the years and melt it all down now and then and make whatever shape I can (without any proper equipment) and then polish it up to a mirror finish before putting it away and forgetting about it for a while, and so on, but recently I have really been wanting to make something useful and meaningful, so I have decided to go for it, buy a few basic tools and try and make something myself and see how it goes!

I have joined with the hope of finding some friendly advice/help with getting started, basic tools, methods and just any advice that's going really. I will obviously need all the help I can get and will be grateful for any tips or advice to get started and hopefully start making a few easy rings/pendants out of gold.

Also, if there is anyone near the Peterborough area that runs classes or would be willing to show me some basics, please feel free to contact me, my wife tried to find a goldsmiths course for my 40th but couldn't find anything local/suitable for someone who works full time and would like to do it as a hobby, so here I am having found the Cooksongold site and ordered a few bits I'm eager to learn and get started, it is something I've always wanted to get into so I am keen to get going.

I have pretty much no knowledge except from the self taught stuff so please feel free to help in any way you can, for example.. is the 9ct casting grain the correct stuff to buy to melt down and start with?

Thank you for reading this, and I look forward to hopefully learning plenty and fulfilling one of my ambitions whilst doing something I enjoy.

Kind regards,

Ian