Equipment for Crushing Jewellery?

[Skyhigh]

Hi guys,

Really quick question here - do you know of any equipment that can be bought to easily crush jewellery?

My father occasionally buys in scrap gold jewellery - but it needs to be broken down (all the stones and such removed) before being passed on to the merchant - but he currently breaks it by hand, which is pretty painstaking (literally).

(tried 'a big hammer' among other things, but as the gold/silver is so soft, it often just mushes stones,etc into the metal)




Any suggestions?


Cheers,

[Filthy]

jewelers' needlenose pliers. there is no good alternative to bending the clamps open and simply taking out the stones one at a time.

besides, i'd imagine there is a market for those stones at any jewelers' shop. you might not want to smash the thing down. take your time and get more money

[Skyhigh]

Cheers for the reply.

He's using needlenose pliers at the moment, but when you're breaking down 40+ items a day, it's getting to his hands (60+).

I was hoping there was some form of metal chipper or crusher or something like that.

Most of the small stones are worthless, even diamonds - up to about 0.3mm - even then it depends on the quality.
98% of items with stones can just be crushed (including the stones) simply because scrap gold is so insanely high.

Hmm, might have to look down the melting/furnace root - similar to how the smelters who process scrap gold use.
(chuck it in a pot, heat it up...)


Cheers

[dherik]

I would try a ball mill. I made a home made one, it's fun to crush stuff in that.

[Skyhigh]

I would try a ball mill. I made a home made one, it's fun to crush stuff in that.

That looks pretty spot on!

Great Will give it a look.

Cheers!

[parrothead]

I have a refiner I am getting ready to try. I send them my jewelry, they process it in it's own batch and chemically seperate the metals and then drop them from solution. They then send me a check for the gold content - 2%. They keep the silver. They also then ship my stones back to me in perfect condition. If there are any CZs in them they will be frosted.

I am going to send this stuff off next week and will report back when the whole process is done.

Even those little diamond chips are worth money if you end up with enough jewelry going through them. I think I saw someone offering around $40 per carat for them. (that is a lot of chips and small diamonds).