Upcycling Silver - Creating Molten Treasure

August 08, 2012

One of the fantastic facets of silversmithing is how you can upcycle silver into something fabulous! For inspiration, I often look at the scraps on my bench, piece them together, and a great pair of geometric earrings is born from the leftover circles, rectangles, and wire bits.

I am drawn to the lustrous red beauty of molten silver. I hear that molten gold is even more magical in appearance but the price of gold is too high for me to experience such luxury! I have always been fascinated by how simple it is to reuse silver scraps by melting them into a shiny silver ball. Below are some photos showing then steps in turning ordinary silver scraps and pieces into molten treasure:

Here is a photo of my bench and the scraps before I begin torching them:

The acetylene torch fuses the scraps together as it creates liquid silver- still glowing hot in the last photo:

Ta- dah! A silver ball ready to polish and turn into jewelry.

The silver ball is then upcycled into jewelry-

you can see the shiny ball in the Reef Ripples bangle in the image to the left. The ball is also used in the Geometrics earrings to the right, plus the Mokume gane and silver rectangles are also "scraps" from the bench that have a new life and purpose.