Michon Jewelry Blog

As a follow-up to my recent post about sterling silver, I’d like to explain a special sterling silver alloy that I use in a lot of my work. Argentium is the trademarked name of a silver alloy that contains 92.5% silver, but instead of the rest being copper, a very small amount of germanium is added to the mix. The resulting alloy has some benefits that regular sterling silver (93.5% silver and 7.5% copper) does not have.

The main benefit to the jewelry consumer is that the germanium in this alloy gives it tarnish resistance. This means you don’t have to polish your silver nearly as often as you would with standard sterling.

There are also benefits for the jewelry maker. The two things I love about this new alloy are: no firescale, and it fuses beautifully. The same cannot be said for standard sterling. Firescale is the black and sometimes reddish splotches that often appear on standard sterling when it is heated with a torch. It can be prevented by coating the metal with flux and anti-firescale sprays; however, these may contain toxic chemicals. With argentium, very little discoloration occurs when heating the metal, and it is much more easily removed than the deep firescale that often forms on regular sterling. Fusing is a way of joining two pieces of metal using heat. The nice thing about fusing is that it doesn’t require solder, which, again, may contain toxic chemicals. To fuse argentium, I use a very small dab of flux at the join, and heat the metal until it ‘flashes’ which is a sign that it has fused. I much prefer fusing to soldering, when possible, and not only because it reduces the amount of chemicals that I have to use in my jewelry work. It’s also a much simpler process: flux, heat, and that’s it. With soldering, I would also need to get the correct amount of solder and place it exactly in the right place, and then pickle until all flux and firescale is off the piece. When fusing, I sometimes need to pickle my piece, but it is for a much shorter amount of time since I don’t have problems with deep firescale, and I’m not using as much flux. Often, all I need to do to clean up a piece after fusing is polish it with a polishing cloth.

So, now you know a little bit about my new favorite metal. It contains the same amount of silver as standard sterling, but resists tarnish and is easier to work with, in my opinion, while providing the same look and quality as standard sterling silver.