Metals

Customers at Thomas Crenshaw’s full-service bike shop, Frame Up Bikes in Pleasant Hill, California, know a lot more about Orbea bikes and its global competitors than they do about the legendary bike company’s cooperative business model. “We know Orbea is a co-operative and worker-owned, but most of our customers don’t,” says Crenshaw. “What they care…

One way Marino evaluates gold leaf is to look at it against the light. Pure gold transmits green rays; highly alloyed gold with silver transmits pale violet rays.

The real secret to gold-beating the old way is in controlling the hammer’s rebound. One report from the 19th century stated that “a workmen can do it for days on end without complaint.”

In its purest form, gold is an element, with the designation Au on the periodic table and the atomic number of 79. Metals are the heaviest elements, and gold is the heaviest of all. Evidence from the Vredefort crater in South Africa indicates that much of the accessible gold supply came to Earth from a…

Gold’s supposed health benefits fall into three categories: medicine, cosmetics, and cuisine. Let’s dissect them one by one: Gold Cosmetics Many excited claims and anecdotes about the cosmetic use of gold leaf gush from beauty websites, echoing the magic word “rejuvenation.” An aesthetician quoted in Harper’s Bazaar explains this phenomenon by saying that “The gold…

Almost hidden on a funky old pier along San Francisco’s waterfront, Autodesk, a world leader in digital tools for makers, is running a prototype shop that seems more like a high-tech playground for grown-ups. In between contracts to make, say, a steel ship propeller with a massive 3-D printer, the company takes in sculptors, engineers, and architects who are pushing the boundaries of their own work. The effect of all this energy is a level of innovation that is expanding—and perhaps redefining—the meaning of craftsmanship.

As we inch closer to another summer, a tinkerer’s mind is likely to go looking for the chance (and the time) to build that rare, handmade item that he or she has always fantasized about. To inspire such glorious flights of fancy, last spring we created a guide—the first of its kind—to the most respected…

Hugo Kohl makes his vintage-style jewelry in six different precious metals, from silver to gold and platinum, and from 14 karat to 18 karat levels of metal quality. Society of North American Goldsmiths (SNAG) is an international nonprofit organization that serves as the primary organization of jewelers and metal artists in North America. It advances…

Ross Shafer made his mark creating a popular brand of mountain bikes, called Salsa, and a line of small but crucial bicycle parts that no one had brought to the market before. Now he’s making what might be the world’s most beautiful “pedal steel guitar.” Might Shafer’s relentless eclecticism offer a model for a kind of second Renaissance?