I have some old gold jewelry. Can it be used to make new custom jewelry?

Gold can often be re-used to create new custom made jewelry pieces. In fact, there are many online websites which offer gold for cash deals (you turn in your old gold items and the company pays you for them in cash). Before used gold can be re-cast it must go through a refining process, which will remove any impurities from the alloy's structure. Impurities within the gold can cause it to discolor and decrease in quality and value when it is melted down and recast. Also, you should expect some gold loss when melting down and re-casting old gold items, since some of the metallic alloy may have been preciously damaged, or impure, and needs to be removed before the gold is cast into new pieces of jewelry. When melting down gold it is important to keep it at the appropriate temperature. If the gold cools while it is being recast it may become brittle and it may become susceptible to possible damage. So, when melting your old gold down, make sure to use an experienced jeweler, who knows how to work with the alloy. If you've decided on melting down your old gold and you've found a jeweler who can do it for you, then a fun idea could be to mix the old gold in with other metallic alloys, a process which will produce different colors of gold (for instance, if you mix gold with copper you'll get rose gold or red gold, if you mix the alloy in with silver or rhodium, the outcome will be white gold). That way, your old gold jewelry will look completely new. A word of caution, mixing base metals such as copper and rhodium in with gold will lower the gold's purity, i.e. its carat weight, and will therefore lower its value.

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