Just to let all jewelry designers know mandatory THIRD PARTY TESTING for jewelry goes into effect March 23rd, 2009. Though the kits might be an idea for now here's what the CPSC has to say about at home kits
http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml08/08038.html . As you can see the agency in charge of the CPSIA has no faith that the home based testing kits are accurate so I don't think they will allow them to be used to produce your GCC before the 3rd party testing is required. Also the CPSIA wants total lead content not just if there is suface lead.
Here's some of my thoughts on the approved testing method:
So here's the overview for one of my items using the destructive acid digestive testing that is the only testing means allowed for jewelry. (This test dissolves your products components in several beakers of acid to get the lead to precipitate that they can weight it against the completed original item.)
Example of product
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=13001048 .
There are 9 different components at $75 dollars per test = $675. I'm able to make 5 finished sets for 1 "batch" of supplies. I'ld be losing at least one finished product to the testing, leaving me 4 finished items to sell. That drives my selling price up to $179 per set, pre-CPSIA price per set $8. Now I still have left over chain, springrings, earwires, jumprings, and bridge links that I use on 2 similar products only changing the shell colors, those finished products have to go to testing again at $675 each. Even though that 7 out of 9 components have been tested in the 1st color combination.
Even if they OK component testing where we can send a sample of each of the supplies to be test, it I would still have to sell the the finished sets at $78 to $98 each depending on how much of each component they need to test.
Wasteful is the nicest thing I can say about the about the current recommended testing. If we can convince the government to allow carry over of testing certicates from the suppliers and put pressure on the suppliers to do the testing & give us copies of the certificates, there would be a signifcant reduction on our personal cost, even though the price of individual supplies would increase.
