Metal Casting Zone Info Blog

Posts Tagged ‘guide’

Product Description
A-to-Z guide to low-volume metalcasting

There’s plenty of demand for one-shot or low production metalcasting job work, but the work often goes begging for lack of anyone to do it. Interested? Metalcasting by C.W. Ammen is packed with step-by-step guidelines for getting started and working effectively and efficiently in this time-honored craft. You get hands-on advice and cost-cutting tips, plus sound ideas for safety and productivity. In easy-to-understand language, this guide shows you how to use metalcrafting’s tools and processes, casting and mold making…molding sands…molding equipment….metal melting, handling, and pouring devices…alloys…and more, including: *Patination of cast metals *Working with chemically-bonded molds *Newest molding, casting, and pattern-making techniques

A Frequently Asked Questions section anticipates and responds to typical beginner’s queries about applications and repair techniques and other metalcasting issues.

Metalcasting

Product Description

Fine Art Metal Casting: An Illustrated Guide to Mould Making and Lost Wax Processes

• ISBN13: 9781901543131
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Product Description
This is a fully comprehensive guide to painting and constructing miniature models. This book should help to get you started if you’re coming to painting with no experience, and encourage you to try out a few new or different methods if you have painted before. Each technique is described in detail along with pictures to illustrate every step as clearly as possible. There’s also a vast array of ‘beauty shots’ to inspire you to pick up those paint brushes!

REVIEWS

“Every so often a book comes along that answers every question you may have about painting miniature figures. This book fits that description … Would I recommend this book? You bet!!! At a list price of $39.95, it’s a book that should be on every miniatures’ painter’s shelf. “IPMS 12511 2007

FOUNDRY MINIATURES PAINTING AND MODELING GUIDE

For those of you who are thinking about selling gold jewelry, it is crucial that you understand fully how to determine the price for gold jewelry. Not only this can help you to tell a good deal from a bad one, it also helps to analyze your competitors and understand the market better before you make any investment.

Gold price

The most important part of wholesale gold jewelry trading is to understand the breakdown of the cost of a piece of gold jewelry. Let‘s say the current good price is $500 per ounce. To calculate the cost of gold for a piece of 14 karat gold jewelry that weighs 3 gram without any stones, we first divide the price per ounce by 31.5, to get the price per gram, which is $15.87. This is the price of pure gold. To convert this to 14K gold, knowing that there are 24 karats in pure gold, we divide $15.87 by 24 and multiply the result by 14. The price per gram for 14k gold is roughly $9.26. Therefore, the total cost of the gold for a 3 gram ring would be $27.78.

Labor Cost

Another major part of the cost for a piece of gold jewelry is the cost for labor, especially for pieces set with precious stones. Gold jewelry generally requires some filing and polishing after it is cast out of the mold. The labor cost can sometime be as high as $2 per gram, depending on the origin of the jewelry and the style. In addition, the cost of setting any stones on a gold jewelry can be over one dollar per stone. Certain advanced setting such as channel set and invisible set cost even more because of the high level of craftsmanship required.

Markup of Competitors

A good way to analyze if a certain style of gold jewelry is profitable and beneficial for a business is to understand your competitors’ prices. Since you already know how to calculate roughly the cost of a piece of jewelry, and therefore the price that you can get it, buy looking at the markups of your competitors, you may get an idea of how severe the competition is. For instance, if the competitors are marking up the jewelry three times of the cost, the competitiveness of that style is not really that high. On the other, if everyone has the same pricing and the markup is 50% above the cost, the style might have already saturated the market.

Volume trading

Another angle of looking at the pricing issue is that when the competitors are marking up at a low margin, the item is probably accepted by a lot of consumers. The justification behind it is that when the profit per piece is low, and people are trading them actively, there probably is a high demand for it. On short, the higher the profit margin, the low the volume of sales and the low the profit margin, the higher could be the volume of sales. Another point that is worth noting is that the volume theory also applies to jewelry vendors. If you buy in large quantity, pricing should go down automatically. Therefore, running a successfully business involves getting the balance between all the factors within the resources and infrastructure you have such as employees and capital.

Closeout Jewelry

Since jewelry business is highly time-sensitive, styles that were once popular several months ago may not sell at all couple months later. Therefore, when buying gold jewelry wholesale, you should estimate the monthly sales and stock according to the sale volume. For example, you may want to stock a certain style for two months worth of stock and restock it when it runs out in order to minimize the closeout items in the inventory, which is sometimes referred to as inventory shrinkage.

By understanding the market and your competitors before buy wholesale gold jewelry, you can reduce the mistakes during your entrepreneurial endeavor, thus increase the chance of succeeding tremendously.

Although Lionel offers several kinds of model trains and track, most of their sales come from O gauge trains. What’s an O gauge train? To better understand that, you first need to know a few things about scale and gauge.

Let’s start with scale. Model trains are scaled down trains–that is, smaller versions of real trains. A model train’s scale tells us its proportion in relation to the real train version. For example, a Lionel train is an O27 train, with a scale of 1:48 . This means that the Lionel train is 48 times smaller than its real train counterpart, with one-quarter inch equal to one scale foot. Due to their larger size, Lionel trains are easy to work with, especially for beginners–but they may not be the best choice as the available product line is smaller than that of standard gauge trains, or HO (half-zero).

Gauge–gauge is the distance between the rails of a railroad track. Standard track gauge is 4’ 8.5”. O gauge tracks are 1.25” apart. Something to be aware of, though, is that gauge and class specifications can vary internationally, so always check the exact measurements before buying internationally.

As O27 trains, Lionel trains are a bit different from standard O gauge trains. They run on O27 track, which is a bit shorter and narrower than standard O track. The difference can be seen when O27 track is laid out in a circle–an 8 piece circle of O27 track will be 27” across (an 8 piece circle of standard O track is 31” across). Love Lionel trains but have a lot of O track from other set-ups? That’s okay because you can use O track and O27 track together without any problem. Raise your track a little by using a shim, widely available at hobby shops.

Some companies, like Conrad, NZG, and Corgi manufacture die-cast, or metal, model trains that are also compatible with O scale track. This can lead to some interesting track set-ups, and die-cast trucks, cars, buses and construction equipment are popular with collectors.

Lionel trains are a good choice for many reasons. Beyond the ease of running an O27 train, they are also great for modelers looking to perfect model and replica trains. Their size is easy to work with (unlike the smaller N and Z gauge trains), and a great choice for children interested in railroading.

It takes many years of experience in trading sterling silver jewelry to tell whether a piece of jewelry is of high quality or not. Especially when you are buying wholesale silver jewelry, a minor difference in the quality might affect your business reputation in the long run. This article summarizes the basic metrics for anyone who is beginning to trade silver jewelry to gauge the quality of silver jewelry.

Finishing

Most of the sterling silver jewelry has some sort of plating because silver itself turns yellow over time. There are several ways of finishing a piece of silver jewelry and they will affect the cost of the jewelry substantially.

High polished sterling silver jewelry has no plating on the jewelry at all and is particularly popular with engravable items or for people who are allergic to certain metals such as nickel. The jewelry is polished by machine without additional raw material cost.

Some silver jewelry has a black antique look to cater to certain consumers. These items are processed by putting the jewelry into chemical solution to oxide the silver before polishing and the pricing is similar to that of high polished ones.

Another common way of finishing sterling silver jewelry is nickel plating. Although nickel plating is illegal in some countries, most of the Italian silver jewelry sold in the market today is plated with nickel. However, since nickel is not considered as precious metal, the price is usually not affected by the cost of plating.

The most expensive way of finishing sterling silver jewelry is using Rhodium. Rhodium is a precious metal that is even more expensive than silver. Therefore, silver jewelry with Rhodium plating is usually at least five cent more expensive per gram. Since Rhodium has the property of being highly tarnish resistant and very expensive at the same time, some manufacturers would coat the sterling silver jewelry with a thin layer of copper before plating the Rhodium to reduce the cost. It might be a good idea to ask the vendors if the Rhodium is plated directly or not because some people have skin type that would turn the copper underneath green.

Stone cutting

Sterling silver jewelry usually has natural or synthetic stones set on it. The cutting of the stones, even with the same size, might affect the cost. For instance, the synthetic diamond cubic zirconia stones would cost more if they are in princess cut as suppose to round brilliant cut. Furthermore, emerald cut and baguette cut stones are even more expensive than princess cut ones.

Stone setting

1. The way that stones are set on a piece of jewelry also affects the cost. Many pendant and bracelet styles employ an economical setting method called wax setting. The stones are not really set one by one on the jewelry. Rather, they are fixed on the mold before the jewelry is cast out from the melted silver and come out of the mold together with the silver. This lowers the cost of the silver jewelry significantly. However, the quality of the setting is not consistent and the heat of the silver in liquid form might affect the quality of the stones.

Besides wax setting, there are several hand-setting methods that are widely adopted. The most common one is prong setting, where the stones are held in place by three to eight prongs, depending on the style. More advanced settings include channel setting, bezel setting, pave setting and invisible setting. Understanding the labor costs involved in different kinds of settings is one of the keys to getting merchandize with the best prices.

Stamping and Casting

Another categorization for sterling silver jewelry is the way they manufacture the metal part. To save cost, some jewelry is made by stamping and cutting the needed shapes out from a large sheet of silver and than bend it into the desired shapes. On the other hand, a more traditional way of producing sterling silver jewelry is to cast the metal out of a mold, which is more labor intensive and hence more costly due to the polishing and filing required afterwards. The way the jewelry is made affects the durability a great deal and hence the success of your business.