Brand Spanking New...

[sportell]

Greetings all,

I am completely new to this trade, but I have been searching around for a bit, trying to find information. I live in Germany and am in a Medieval recreation group. I want to make some jewelry for me and my friends for our garb. We are seriously lacking in jewelers in our region and I want to pick up the slack.

I have scanned most of the posts on this forum and there are a few that seem pretty helpful. I do run into a few snags though. My German is very limited, so I am not in a position to take classes right now, even if they have them in Frankfurt. (And before anyone comments on my wonderful English, I'm an American with an MA in English. Not a brilliant German. :-) ) I also have no clue where to order supplies. I have limited access to an American mailing address. Though I suppose I can pick up the basics at the local hardware stores.

It seems silver was recommended as a beginner tool. I can start on silver and work my way up to gold. Am I correct to presume that the techniques are similar, only different heats are needed for the metals?

What are some good books people swear by? This will be my main source of information. Also, does anyone know a good source for very rough gemstones? I don't want faceted, finished stones, they are not Medieval. I want basically rocks, that I can polish and set. The sooner the better on the gemstones. I'm working on some Byzantine garb for my love and myself, for the summer. We need to literally be jewel encrusted. I need stones set on simple gold plates, surrounded by pearls. I'm good on the pearls, but need to know how to make simple settings and where to get the gems.

Thanks in advance for any help forthcoming. I greatly appreciate it. I will reread the posts and make a good starter tool list.

sportell

[Micha Hinden]

Hi,
I am a trained goldmith from Germany, now living and working in Sydney as an interior designer. Whilst it is a few years back now we used to get our supplies from a company in Pforzheim, the web adress is http://www.goldschmiedebedarf.de/index.php?language=en. The company is called Fischer. Pforzheim and Idar-Oberstein are traditional centeres of jewellery in Germany, both have specialised universities in jewellery design. There are a number of gem stone suppliers in Idar, which apart from having a great gemstone museum, has lots of traditional whole salers as well as a rather ugly highrise full of suppliers, diamonds and uncut stones. I would give them a go as a starting point.
Good luck

[gsmithadm]

Thanks for the post. Posting activity has remained low since the site received a large amount of spam a few months back. Hopefully we can now get some discussion going.

I suggest going to ebay. Click on the "advanced" search. Search only in Germany and try various searches. I searched for "garnet rough" and found some German sellers. "Rough" is a common term for gem material before it is cut.

Brazil is another country that is the source of a lot of gemstones. You may want to do the same for Brazil although you would have to import the material. Do you have any idea what gemstones you want to incorporate? Plain old quartz in purple and orange shades can be quite affordable. Good luck with your project and post a picture once complete.