How do you figure out how much the pure gold in your gold jewellery is worth? This article gives you all the information you need to know about how to measure the weight of pure gold in jewellery at home.
To figure out how much gold is really worth, you need to weigh pure gold and know how much pure gold is in gold jewellery. This is important because you can’t figure out how much gold is worth until you know how much it weighs and how pure it is. Gold’s weight is measured in Troy ounces or grammes. The number of karats tells you how much gold weighs.
Keep in mind that, unless you’re dealing with scrap gold, it’s easy to find out how much gold is in a piece of jewellery by looking at the certification stamp. The stamp proves that the gold meets a certain purity standard. For example, 14k gold is 58.3% pure gold, which means that 14 of the 24 possible parts are pure gold.
But knowing this is not enough to figure out how much the gold is worth. You also need to know how much gold you have, which is where this article comes in handy. But you’ll need both the gold chemical testing kit and a digital gramme scale to figure out how much gold you have.
Figure out how much gold weighs
Follow these steps to figure out how much gold weighs:
Step 1:
First, calibrate your scale by putting it to the test with a known-weight object. Make sure you use a gramme scale, and if you want the most accurate results, you might want to buy a gramme weight along with the scale. Make sure the weight readings are accurate by calibrating the scale only after you’ve put it on a hard, level surface. You can’t calibrate the scale until it is level. Remember that the scale must show the same weight as the test weight.
Step 2:
Now that you have set the scale, put the piece of gold you want to weigh on it, and then read the result. Note that you should weigh each piece of gold separately unless you know how pure each one is. But if you want to be as exact as possible, you should think about weighing each piece of gold separately.
Step 3:
To avoid confusion, make a list of everything that needs to be weighed. Next to each item, write its exact weight and the amount of gold it has, which is called the “karatage.” You need to know this in order to figure out how much the gold is worth.
Another important thing to remember is that the spot price of gold changes every day. You can find the spot price of gold for that day in your local newspaper or on the Internet. You could also get this information from a gold bullion dealer in your area. Just remember that the prices for most precious metals like gold, silver, and platinum are usually given in Troy Ounces and not in grammes, though some pages will tell you the weight in grammes or help you convert the prices.
You could also look in Webster’s Dictionary for more information about gold weight and conversions. Even though this is an odd place to visit, the reference section has a lot of useful information to help you with the conversion. Most of the time, 18k gold would weigh 15.5 grammes in most settings. In a nutshell, the percentage of purity of the gold helps you figure out how much gold is in the 14k gold alloy (rose, yellow, or white gold).
How to measure the weight of gold without a gramme scale
Not everyone has a gramme scale ready to go at home, and sometimes you need to find out how much gold weighs quickly and don’t have time to order a scale. In this case, you’d want to know that you can almost always tell how much gold weighs even without a scale. How does that work? Well, keep reading!
Using a stick (Create a homemade weighing scale)
In this case, the dowel is a small piece of wood that fits into a hole to hold two parts of two different objects together in one place. Carefully put the stick on the table.
Then you’ll need a small, sharp nail with a flat head. Now, put this nail under the dowel and spread it out flat. Put a little bit of pressure on the dowel to make it stick. When you do this, you need to be extra careful because the dowel must be fastened so that it is level with the tabletop.
Step 1:
Make a sea saw now (use a ruler). Take your ruler and put it on the dowel at a right angle. The dowel will act as the fulcrum, and the ruler will balance on the dowel, making a sea saw.
Step 2:
Balance your sea-saw. Put two cups of the same size and weight on each end of your sea-saw to keep it balanced. You could also put nails on each side, making sure that the cups or nails weigh the same. There shouldn’t be any weight differences. You can see if the weight is balanced by looking at your seesaw and making sure it doesn’t tip to either side.
Step 3:
Now weigh your gold. To do this, put the gold piece in one of the cups and move it toward the middle of the ruler. On the other side, use a standard weighting material (in the other cup). The standard thing to weigh could be water (the weight is measured in grammes or millilitres) or coins (you’ll need to know how much each coin weighs in grammes). Keep adding coins until neither cup tips the ruler in one direction or the other. The standard material makes it easy to figure out how much the gold piece weighs.
Step 4:
On the makeshift scale above, you could also use US banknotes to weigh the gold. One dollar bill weighs 1g, a penny made after 1982 weighs 2.5g, and a nickel weighs 5g. You could also use grains like lentils. Just remember that this home fix only works for things that don’t weigh more than 20g.
Step 5:
So, for example, if you have gold dust, you’d have to use a nickel that weighs about 5g. You could use a pencil instead of the dowel as the fulcrum. To measure 5g of gold dust, keep putting it on the scale until it balances. Not sure how to put everything together? Go to your local pharmacy and ask them to weigh a spoonful of rice for you. Then, you can use this as a guide to figure out how much gold you have.
Conclusion
No matter which method you use, you can always figure out how much your pure gold weighs in grammes by multiplying the jewelry’s weight in grammes by the percentage of its purity. This is only possible if the karatage of the gold is stamped on the jewellery. Keep in mind, though, that if there was no authenticity stamp, you would have to use a gold test kit to figure out how pure the gold was. You can buy a gold test kit online.
To figure out how much the gold weighs in ounces, you need to know that one Troy ounce is 31.2 grammes and one regular ounce is 28.34 grammes. One Troy ounce is the same as twenty pennyweights (dwt).