I'll start withs saying that for now, there are no possible ways to get gold from steel, however there are many ways to get the effect of golden texture, and I'll show you how I did it!

This is an easy project, for everyone, who has a blowtorch or a gas stove. This small project is good both for appearance of your things and for your knowledge about metalurgy!

All you need is:

Piece of steel,
Blowtorch or gas stove,
Pliers
And precision!

I used a small steel ring that I made from a coin!

Thanks to tomatoskins, Mrballeng, and many others for inspiration! The coin ring turned out great!

Step 1: Science

For me it's easier to do something if I understand how it works, and why something happens when I do it!

If steel has been freshly ground, sanded, or polished, it will form an oxide layer on its surface when heated. As the temperature of the steel is increased, the thickness of the iron oxide will also increase. Although iron oxide is not normally transparent, such thin layers do allow light to pass through, reflecting off both the upper and lower surfaces of the layer. This causes a phenomenon called thin-film interference, which produces colors on the surface. As the thickness of this layer increases with temperature, it causes the colors to change from a very light yellow, to brown, then purple, then blue. These colors appear at very precise temperatures, and provide the blacksmith with a very accurate gauge for measuring the temperature.

The table that can be seen in pictures is not very precise, because almost every steel has a different mixture of metals. So every steel changes colours at its own temperatures.

Also it's important to know that this layer of iron oxide IS NOT PERMANENT and it will fade with time if you wont coat it with varnish (or something else)!

Step 2: Heating

If you want the color to be bright, first thing you have to do is to polish the steel.

When polished, you simply take the piece of steel and start heating it, but be careful, as blowtorch can reach TEMPERATURE ABOVE 1000 CELSIUS, and because of that I suggest using smaller flame so you wouldn't overdo it. If you do overdo it, than that's not a problem, you can easly sand down the layer of iron oxide, and overdo it!

As I said earlier, if you do want to keep the colour, you have to varnish coat your piece of steel.

Have fun!

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