kcsilversmith
Member
- Joined
- Jun 17, 2017
- Messages
- 7
Sorry it took so long to reply the end of the months around here is crazy. So depending on how far u live from a refinery and your skill level I can make some introductions. The group we use has long cations in about every major city allthough due to recent events they no longer operate in the state of Florida. We got ours by asking like hey if you ever get behind we can help. That's when we found out they don't refine anything there it all goes to one place via UPS and that they don't get commission, customers don't want to wait 3 weeks and this is no secret to anyone who has been at it for awhile but it's not like they process ur 500g batch by itself it's melted assayed and but into groups i.e. 2.5% all goes in one 3% in another as long as they hit their numbers they pay everyone on the batch average so mine may be 2.6% the others 2.1% nobody ever complains because it's to hard to calculate. So for 2 years we have been doing it with much higher results we keep 25% of the gold and everything that isn't gold 
Even as one of the world's largest refineries due to all the red tape of storing processing and disposing of chemicals and wastes it actually makes it more profitable to source it out. We don't have to anymore but you must be able to hit .9999 otherwise they would have to process it still since to bring to market it needs to be at least .999. Ours has to be above 10 but below 25% so they can avoid the quartering process however this is not possible with out exspensice xrf equipment. The down side is this probably out of reach for somebody who doesnt have access to large amounts of scrap since proving yourself will likely take turn ins of 2+ ounces 4-5 times before a refiner would be willing to give you a chance. Back to your Silver idea the need is very limited most small jewelry companies don't do much custom work with gold or silver, maybe someone else has had better luck. We do recycle and return for a bead store that's about 10 ozs a year and for a few artist silversmiths we met through the guild the younger crowd is much more likely to pay a little more to get their product locally because buying local is all the rage these days. Let me know and if those aren't viable I'll be happy to share other ways that we have done and still do today.
Even as one of the world's largest refineries due to all the red tape of storing processing and disposing of chemicals and wastes it actually makes it more profitable to source it out. We don't have to anymore but you must be able to hit .9999 otherwise they would have to process it still since to bring to market it needs to be at least .999. Ours has to be above 10 but below 25% so they can avoid the quartering process however this is not possible with out exspensice xrf equipment. The down side is this probably out of reach for somebody who doesnt have access to large amounts of scrap since proving yourself will likely take turn ins of 2+ ounces 4-5 times before a refiner would be willing to give you a chance. Back to your Silver idea the need is very limited most small jewelry companies don't do much custom work with gold or silver, maybe someone else has had better luck. We do recycle and return for a bead store that's about 10 ozs a year and for a few artist silversmiths we met through the guild the younger crowd is much more likely to pay a little more to get their product locally because buying local is all the rage these days. Let me know and if those aren't viable I'll be happy to share other ways that we have done and still do today.
