Nicko98 said:
Well, seeing as I dont want to kill my neighbours or myself, Im going to have to find an alternative.
What Im doing is trying to find the resources and make a ring for my partner without buying any of the materials.
Ive found myself a high quality 6.9ct sapphire, and would like to pair it with a silver band.
Do you have any suggestions for alternative ways to find and refine raw materials into silver?
Thanks!
What you can do is ask at your lapidary club - they are forever mounting stones in silver mountings. Mountings come ready-made (do you really want to smelt it yourself)? If so, I imagine they would know where to get silver to make mountings (I assume some do that).Perhaps satisfy yourself with only buying the raw silver and then designing the ring. It is difficult to get raw silver from a mine site and smelt it down in Australia (we don't have many high-grade silver mines like the USA and central and South America, and it would be a mugs game trying to refine it from galena ore as grade is too low and you would have to usually put a third of a tonne of ore thought to get an ounce of silver). There are a few old high-grade silver sites around Zeehan in Tasmania, in northern Queensland and New England, an operating mine just outside Kalgoorlie, and a few minor sites in central west NSW and SE NSW (usually termed "epithermal"). However these high-grade ones would still require you to smelt many kilograms of ore, and it is harder to hand-pick their less-massive sulphide minerals prior to smelting. Also they can have even higher toxicity (tellurium, selenium, mercury, arsenic - tellurium and selenium go directly to vapour like zinc and cadmium).
One tip - silver is usually greatly enriched at surface around such mines, often occurring as black unattractive masses of secondary silver minerals with manganese, iron, chlorides, bromides etc that can run hundreds to thousands of ounces per tonne. But hard to smelt and refine....and you are unlikely to get primary silver sulphide mineral (argentite) from the dumps that you can recognise as such, because the silver starts converting within years to secondary minerals in the presence of oxygen and rain water. I occasionally see lumps of pure native silver or electrum (a 50/50 gold-silver alloy) in lumps of an ounce or more - Orbost, St Arnaud. But again these are commonly within the black earthy silver minerals (they also always occur near surface), but they are harder to find than gold nuggets of that size.
White gold (silver-gold-palladium alloy, often plated with rhodium), zirconium, tungsten, cobalt, bronze and titanium are all used in rings nowadays. I assume it is that you want a silver coloured metal to contrast with the stone? Only a few of these would satisfy that, and most require high temperature and complex smelting (eg in an inert gas atmosphere). Keep in mind that many metals cause allergic reactions in contact with the skin. Personally I like white gold best when I want something silvery (pure silver requires regular polishing and will wear down with time). Nothing beats gold, silver or platinum metals for long-term lustre and/or wear.
Personally I would consider being satisfied with having found the stone and making the ring from purchased silver. Someone like Leftie might give you advice.
