Custom Gold Refining: Keep Your Sentimental Gold

Does Jewelsmith Use My Actual Gold?

Yes! Our Same Molecule Refining Service is different from the usual scrap gold refining that most jewelry stores, refiners and pawn shops offer. 

How Gold Refining Is Done - Usually

Usually, your gold is mixed into a huge lot from a bunch of different sources and the pure gold that's extracted is not specifically your gold, just the equivalent of the weight of the pure gold in the batch you sent.

How Same Molecule Refining Is Different

Only your gold is in the lot that is being refined. It's not mixed with anyone else's. That means the pure gold you get back is only your sentimental gold. Note that the process requires a minimum of 1 ounce of gold jewelry.

How it Works

1. Our team of designers, gemologists and goldsmiths carefully examine each piece that you bring or send us. They will make sure that each piece is solid gold, not gold plated or gold filled. 
2. Our goldsmiths will gently remove gems that you'd like to reset in your new design or would like returned to you.
3. The pure gold that's in the jewelry is extracted from the other metals in the alloy and is formed into granules called grain. 
4. Your 24K grain can then be mixed with any combination of alloy metals to create any karat or color of gold!

Can I Turn 14K Yellow Gold into 18K White Gold?

Absolutely! Your pure gold can be made into any karat like 14K, 18K, 22K and in any color like yellow, white, rose or even green.

What do the different karats of gold really mean?

Karats can be expressed as a number followed by a K (ex. 14K) or a 3-digit number (ex. 585). Sometimes you might see Kt or KT instead of just K but they all mean the same thing.

Pure gold consists of 24 karats or 24 parts in the whole. 18K is 18 parts pure gold, 6 parts other metals to total 24 parts. 14K is 14 parts pure gold, 10 parts other metals and so on.

The 3-digit number is a little more straightforward to understand. This is the millesimal fineness scale.

This scale tells you how many parts per 1000 is gold. 18K is 75% pure gold and 25% other metals. 

These pie charts help visualize the pure gold to alloy ratios:

Colors

How are other metals used to change the natural yellow color of pure gold?

Rose Gold: Copper with its orange pink color is used to create rose gold.

White Gold: White metals such as nickel or palladium are used to whiten gold.

Green Gold: This one's a little less intuitive, but silver (white) and copper (orange pink) are added to the yellow pure gold and it turns out green.

For a deeper dive into karats, alloys and colors of gold, check out our blog post: Know Your Karats

The Sustainability Factor

Circular Luxury - using your own gold or recycled gold is the most eco-friendly way to create your custom jewelry because it requires zero new mining. Here at Jewelsmith, we only use recycled metal whether it comes from your Same Molecule Refining or if we provide it. We have always believed in finding ways to create sustainable and meaningful options for our clients.

Cost Benefit

With gold at all time high market prices, providing your own gold for your custom jewelry project often eliminates the need to purchase gold.

Our prices are based on labor, metal, and gems if applicable. If you're providing metal and/or resetting your own gems, then you are already reducing the overall price of your project.

If you have extra gold, platinum or silver beyond what you need for your new jewelry, then you can use it as credit toward the rest of the cost. This can significantly reduce and sometimes even eliminate any balance that might be left.

Sentimental Value

This is probably the biggest reason our clients choose to use Same Molecule Refining for their custom jewelry projects. Your grandparent's wedding rings that they wore every day for 60 years were passed down to you. Your cherished memories of them are forever linked to those bands of gold, but what can you do with them so they're not just sitting around? The most versatile option is to extract the pure gold and use it to create a new custom piece of jewelry in any color or karat you would like. That way the sentimental gold is always with you.

How Long Does It Take?

The process itself takes about a week or so. That can usually be included in your 6-8 week turnaround time. Your designer will give you a more exact timeline once all the details of your project have been worked out. 

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