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For a while I have been reluctant to work with rose gold. I heard how difficult this metal can be to work with especially when casting or soldering. But I finally bit the bullet and finished a rose gold ring from my Fold Collection with an oval Aquamarine. It turned out nicely. The ring shipped last week to the customer.
What a splash of color! The rose gold is pretty intense, pretty similar to copper. It's a 14k gold alloy with high copper content. It's a great choice for someone who loves the color of copper but not the staining, tarnish and softness of the base metal copper. However the intense color can somewhat overpower some gemstones. It will make any light colored stone look somewhat pinkish. Most Aquanarines are pretty pale blue and finding one that did not look washed out next to this metal wasn't easy.
I did carve the ring out of wax and left the casting to a experienced local caster since rose gold can come out with brittleness and porosity if not handled correctly. I also did not have to do any soldering on it, so no issues color match of solders or cracking and brittleness often encountered when cooling and quenching wasn't done at the right temperatures. 18k rose gold seems to be the most difficult to work with, 14k rose gold is a bit easier. So I am only offering 14k rose gold for some of my designs.
Every alloy behaves very distinctive. White gold requires different working techniques than rose gold which also behaves unlike yellow gold. 14k gold can behave very different than 18k gold of the same variety. Even within those groups there are multiple different alloys available. They all contain various percentages of each metal (gold, copper, silver, zinc, palladium or nickle) and therefore need different working considerations. When working with gold any errors can be costly. When I work with new alloys I usually do a lot of research before hand and then hope for the best
Luckily the casting can back perfectly and was easy to clean up. Stone setting went smoothly and the gold polished up nicely with tripoli and final finish with red rouge.
The ring is available in my shop in rose gold but also in other metals like palladium, platinum and yellow gold. If you love rose gold I do offer quite a few designs in this metal.
