In Reply to: jewellery posted by trembler on Wednesday, 8. July 2009 at 08:37 Bali Time:
I am a professional jeweler and in my opinion it is not really worth it for silver. There is usually a lot of solder in any piece of jewelry, which is an alloy of silver and other metals. When the solder is melted into the rest of the silver, there will be pits in the silver, which could lead to poor surface quality and also to brittleness.
I usually send my silver to a refiner to remove the impurities through chemical processes. I recycle my own gold in the studio, but this involved the laborious process of seperating out/ cutting off the parts that have solder (which you would only know how to find if you are a jeweler). With the high gold of price these days, it is worth not having to put cash into more materials.
Another note about white gold. There are many alloys of white gold, and in addition to the problem of the solder mixing into the alloy, there is a possibility that the method of working with it would be unsuitable for the alloy. For example, the Balinese goldsmiths use charcoal blocks, which are never supposed to be used certain alloys. These metals absorb the carbon in the charcoal and make the finished jewelry very brittle.
Gold coins would be perfectly suitable for the Balinese workshop and silver coins as well. Any old jewelry, I would trade in for scrap value in your home country.
Kind of long and technical, but I see these questions frequently and wanted everybody to be clear about what happens when metal is recycled.