Reusing old good, is it possible?

[chel180]

I want to have my engagement ring remade and am wondering if there are any reputable jewelers that would melt it down to re-cast it as a wedding band for me? For sentimental reasons I would love to reuse the gold as it would mean it was the same ring that I was married with just in a new shape.

To clarify I will have my engagement ring made by a well known jeweler who doesn't reuse old gold. So then I will have my old engagement ring and wedding band (wedding band was shaped to fit old ering so I need a new one to match the new ering) left over. I couldn't keep/don't want to keep the original settings for other stones/use as RHR as its very poorly made hence having a new setting made. And to be honest it angers/upsets me every time I look at it (the setting is not square, its rather thin and flimsy, prongs not all the same etc etc).

Does anyone know where I could get a plain white gold square wedding band made from the gold in my old engagement ring and wedding band?

 

[denverappraiser]

The reason high end jewelers don’t like to reuse old gold is because they don’t control the alloy so they don’t know exactly what’s in it. There can be contamination from solders and such used in the original assembly as well as the original alloy that’s out of their control. This can lead to porosity, breakage and other manufacturing defects that rightfully fall into the area of their fault.

There are four general strategies for a solution.

1) Refuse to reuse gold directly. Recycle the existing gold through the refinery and use 100% ‘new’.

2) Put up with the defects. Sometimes it works out ok. Sometimes the customer doesn’t notice.

3) Use a mix so that most of the gold is new but there is some carefully selected portion that is a used for symbolic reasons.

4) Small lot refining where they extract and reuse the gold from a few gram lot. Note: This is a PIA and is generally more expensive as a result. Since often the real reason that people want to do this is because they think it' will save money, this undermines the point.

 

[chel180]

Thanks for the reply DA. I do want it for sentimental purposes, I'm even willing to pay a little more than normal just to get my gold in there. Do you know any companies would could actually do this for me?

 

[wakingdreams53]

Wink Jones at High Performance Diamonds has mentioned being able to reuse gold for simple projects, but not ornate. Going from engagement ring to wedding band would be highly likely to be able to reuse the gold.
Contact them here: http://highperformancediamonds.com/index.php?page=contact