Handmade and cast and diestruck -- OH MY!

Sara

The most beautiful experience we can have
is the mysterious - the fundamental emotion which
stands at the cradle of true art and true science.
~ Albert Einstein ~

It’s not all that easy.

Casting involves making a wax or plastic model of the piece, poring a plaster like material around the wax and burning the original model.  This leaves a cavity in the plaster that’s filled with molten metal and, when it cools, leaves a metal copy of the original wax.  This technique has been used for several millennia  to make things out of metal and it works pretty well.

Die striking involves carving a negative image in a piece of rather hard metal that is then used as a stamp to form a piece of softer metal into the shape you want.  This too has been used for quite a while and is the standard approach for making coins, doorknobs, car hoods and many other metal objects. 

Handmade is a tough one.  Not everyone uses the term in the same way.  The problem is that the craftsman is using tools and it’s necessary to decide what tools are acceptable for the particular definition.  Is it still ‘handmade’ if it involves non-handmade components?  Is it handmade if the craftsman uses semi-automated equipment?  Is it still handmade if there are a multitude of workers involved in an assembly line type process?  It gets pretty complicated.  I mostly don’t use this term because of the confusion it causes.

Many, even most, jewelry items involve several processes and it can include hand assembly involving both cast and die struck components.  It’s rarely an either/or type question.  Heads, which are the prong assemblies that hold stones, are usually die struck for example.  Attaching the head to the ring is almost always done by hand. 

It’s generally a mistake as a consumer to target for a particular technique of manufacture as ‘better’.  It all depends on the job and the craftsman should be using the correct method for the job at hand.  This decision is part of what they’re being paid for. Sometimes this means casting, sometimes it involves fabricating from raw materials, sometimes it involves commercially available parts and sometimes it’s a combination of all of these things.

Neil Beaty
GG(GIA) ICGA(AGS) NAJA
Professional Appraisals in Denver 

There's never a crowd when you go that extra mile.

Sara

The most beautiful experience we can have
is the mysterious - the fundamental emotion which
stands at the cradle of true art and true science.
~ Albert Einstein ~

Chasing is a process of taking a small tool, pressing it against the metal and hitting the back end with a hammer.  This makes a little dent in the metal the shape of the tool.  You then move the tool a millimeter or so and hit it again.  You’re ‘chasing’ the tool with the hammer as you move it across the work.    It’s amazing what a skilled worker can do with this.  It’s the way Paul Revere would make a punch bowl with images of dancing ladies around the outside edge, all dented from a single sheet of metal!

Piercing is where you drill a small hole in a piece of metal and thread a hairlike saw through it.  You can then cut the hole into a shape other than round.  As with the above, the work done by a master can take your breath away.  It can look like a 3 dimensional sculpture made of metallic lace. 

Doing these things well is really hard and they are both becoming lost arts.

Die striking doesn’t really make the metal denser but it does work harden it which, for most things, is a desirable affect.  Poorly done casting can be porous but modern casting techniques and equipment has made huge inroads into solving this.  There’s some very smart people working on this and they think nothing of things like casting in an argon atmosphere under tremendous pressure and details like using computers to control the casting temperature to a single degree.   The concept is unchanged but its generally not done the same way it was 100 years ago.

Neil Beaty
GG(GIA) ICGA(AGS) NAJA
Professional Appraisals in Denver

There's never a crowd when you go that extra mile.

From the Facets/Signed Pieces website:

Die-struck Rings:

Die-struck jewelry is denser and more durable than casted or handmade pieces.

Since die-struck pieces are made from extruded metal - metal that is subjected to extremely high pressure - the pieces are free from porosity. This allows the ring to have a higher polish.

Even the thinnest die-struck prong is stronger than any casted prong.

The die-struck blank is cut to accommodate the exact size and shape of the diamonds.

http://www.thefacetscollection.com/diamond_wedding_bands.cfm

There are certainly pieces that I'd love to have handmade...Leon Mege, Mark Morrell, and Maytal Hoftman come to mind. But my jeweler recommended a die struck solitaire setting for my diamond because of the reasons listed above.  So that's why I was happy to hear that the H. Levi rings were die struck (and from the pictures, they do appear to have an excellent finish). I think the recent problems with the Lockes rings illustrated what can sometimes happen with handmade. I'd certainly love to have some handmade jewelry items, but I'd want the very best quality. But I didn't really need a plain solitaire setting to be handmade.

~~~ When in doubt...don't.~~~

........... Karl has joined the diamond trade and is now posting as Karl_K

~~~ When in doubt...don't.~~~