The price of precious metal
Posted by Leah on Apr 19, 2006
The price of precious metals has skyrocketed in recent months - in fact, silver is almost twice as expensive per ounce than it was a year or two ago. Gold and platinum are also much higher than they were a few months ago, but since I work in silver more, I’m mostly concerned about the price of silver.
Jewelers have many different approaches for dealing with this - some are simply raising prices, particularly the ones who manufacture large quantities. Others are starting to experiment with alternative metals - copper, brass, titanium, niobium, and stainless steel, to name a few.
I think the rising price of precious metals is a great excuse to experiment with some even more alternative materials - found objects, resin, fibers, hardware bits and pieces, etc. I’m hanging pendants on rubber cords, and stringing beads on memory wire that’s been sitting unused in my studio for months, and I’ve been incorporating rocks and shells that I recently found at the beach into my work. I also have plans to start using resin to incorporate some of my husband’s images (he paints acrylic paintings, www.southwesternvoodoo.com) into my jewelry.
What all of this means for the jewelry buyer is that you will likely see jewelers innovating more than ever, in order to create products that are unique and beautiful and worth owning - but hopefully still at a price people can afford to pay. Even the high-end designers are affected by this - maybe not in terms of what their clients are willing to pay for jewelry, but because increasingly, consumers want a product that is unique - something that not all of their friends own.
Preventing Tarnish
Posted by Leah on Jan 25, 2006
Here are a few tips for preventing (or at least slowing) the tarnishing process:
- Store jewelry in a clean, dry environment
- Before storing your jewelry, clean it, and wipe metal parts with a silver polishing cloth (many brands contain chemicals that will help prevent tarnish from forming; they will also remove slight tarnish that has started forming)
- Consider purchasing anti-tarnish strips or anti-tarnish cloth (also called pacific cloth) for long-term jewelry storage
- Do not wear your jewelry in the shower, swimming pools, hot tubs, while cooking, or while using hair products or household cleaning products. These situations can expose the metal to sulphur and other chemicals that may cause oxides and sulfides (in other words, tarnish) to form.
- Clean and polish jewelry when tarnish starts - it is a lot easier to remove light tarnish (i.e. with a polishing cloth) than heavy tarnish.
Cleaning Silver
Posted by Leah on Jan 19, 2006
Here’s an easy way to clean sterling silver jewelry that has gotten a little tarnished:
Put a piece of aluminum foil in the bottom of a bowl. Place the jewelry on top of the foil.
Cover the jewelry and aluminum foil with not quite boiling hot water, and add baking soda. I’ve heard it works even better if you add a little salt.
The baking soda should bubble, and when it stops bubbling, the tarnish should be gone.
To get silver really shiny, use a polishing cloth after cleaning. I use Sunshine brand cloths (which I also sell) but there are many silver polishing cloths on the market that will work. Goddard brand silver cloths are high-quality polishing cloths that can sometimes be found at shops selling beauty supplies or jewelry cleaners.
I do not recommend using commericial silver dips to remove tarnish from jewelry that is not exclusively sterling silver. The reason for this is that the chemicals in many of these products can damage pearls and other common jewelry materials, including some stones. While I can’t guarantee that the baking soda/aluminum foild method is safe for all jewelry materials, it is definitely safer for most common jewelry materials than using harsh chemicals.
Is 14k “real gold”? And other questions about gold…
Posted by Leah on Dec 14, 2005
The simple answer is yes. 14k gold is real gold.
So what does 14k mean? How is it different from 22k or 18k?
Without going into mathematical ratios, the lower the karat number, the lower the percentage of gold in the alloy. In english: pure gold is very soft (like pure silver) and therefore not appropriate for many jewelry applications. So, gold is alloyed with other metals to make it harder, resulting in jewelry products that are more durable and longer lasting.
24k gold is pure, unalloyed gold.
18k gold, one of the most commonly used karat golds in the US, is gold alloyed with other metals. It generally has a good yellow color, but is much tougher than 24k gold.
14k gold, another very common karat gold in the US, has a higher percentage of alloy metals than 18k - in other words, the amount of pure gold in 14k is less than the amount of pure gold in 18k. 14k tends to be tougher even than 18k - to the point that some jewelers don’t like to work with it because it isn’t as malleable.
10k and 12k gold are also sold in the US - these are less than 50% pure gold, and more than 50% alloy metals, and tend to have a paler color compared with higher karat golds.
So, are karat golds solid gold? Yes. Solid gold refers to gold, in any karat, that is that karat gold all the way through the metal. This is in contrast to gold plated metal (another metal with gold molecules bonded to its outside surface through the plating process) or gold filled metal (brass bonded to a thin sheet of karat gold, usually 12k or 14k, where the layer of karat gold weighs at least 1/20th of the total weight of the metal).
Confused? I was too, when I started researching gold colored metals to use in my jewelry making! In practical terms, karat gold is solid gold. Gold plated metal is basically gold colored, although often the gold color is so thin that it can wear off quickly and need to be replated every so often. Gold filled metal gives the look of 14k or 12k gold, at a price not much higher than sterling silver, and the gold will not wear off in contact with skin.
So, which is the best option? It completely depends on a person’s budget and the reason they are purchasing jewelry.
Gold plated jewelry is inexpensive and perfect for trendy pieces that will only be worn a few times, or jewelry that will be worn rarely, or if you have access to plating services and don’t mind doing occasional upkeep on your jewelry.
Gold filled jewelry is a good option for people who want jewelry that will last, but aren’t looking to invest karat gold prices in a piece of jewelry. Gold filled generally costs a bit more than silver, but not as much as solid karat gold, and is a better quality than gold plated metal. In my experience wearing gold filled jewelry, it looks and feels like 14k - but, from a jewelry making point of view, the fact that gold filled metal is really a two-layered metal means that heat applications, such as soldering, can melt the two different metals together - resulting in a brass/gold alloy that is mostly brass and won’t look like karat gold.
Gold filled metal is further broken down into 14/20 GF (14k is at least 1/20th the total weight), 12/20 GF (12k is at least 1/20th the total weight) and 14/10 GF (14k is at least 1/10th the total weight). I haven’t seen 12/10 GF, but it probably exists. It is good to ask which kind of gold filled metal a piece of jewelry is made from, if you are concerned with how much actual gold is in the piece.
Solid 14k, 18k and higher karat golds are luxurious. They are expensive, but are the best choice for high-end jewelry, particularly jewelry that will have stones set in it (assuming a gold-toned look is desired; for white metals, platinum and palladium are excellent alternatives to white gold).
Now, for my personal preferences. I use 14/20 GF for a lot of jewelry making applications that do not involve the use of a torch. I do a lot of wirework, and 14/20 GF is perfect for that. I also use 14k and 18k gold in my work, primarily for custom pieces and pieces that use higher-quality pearls and stones. I don’t use karat golds lower than 14k - if I want the look of gold for a lower price than 14k, I switch to gold filled because I prefer the color of gold filled. I also don’t use gold plated metal (or silver plated) because I would worry that the process of making jewelry from the metal would remove the plating.
Argentium (TM) Silver
Posted by Leah on Dec 7, 2005
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.
What is sterling silver?
Posted by Leah on Dec 5, 2005
Contrary to what many people believe, sterling silver is not pure silver. Pure silver is very soft and not appropriate for some jewelry applications because of its softness. Sterling silver is 92.5% pure silver alloyed with 7.5% other metals. In the United States, an alloy that is 92.5% silver can be called sterling silver, regardless of what the other 7.5% is; however, the standard alloy is 92.5% silver and 7.5% copper.
There are several non-standard alloys of sterling silver on the market today. These alloys are formulated using metals other than copper for some or all of the 7.5% that is not silver, and are usually intended to be more tarnish resistant than the standard silver-copper alloy.
