[Jewelry making - Article 00243] - Re: [Orchid] Sterling

[Allan Heywood]

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g'day Dave

    Hallmarks and Common Control marks etc relate only to gold, silver
    or platinum "fineness" - that is, metal purity. They are not related
    to alloy composition in any other way. 

    So this: 

>      23.6 Misrepresentation as to silver content. (b) It is unfair or
>     deceptive to mark, describe, or otherwise represent all or part of
>     an industry product as "silver," "solid silver," "Sterling Silver,"
>     "Sterling," or the abbreviation "Ster." unless it is at least
>     925/1,000ths pure silver. 

    refers only to minimum precious metal content and nothing else.  The
    terms "silver", solid silver" and "Sterling silver" used in this
    context must refer to previously-defined metallurgical entities in
    order to have any meaning. e.g. the element silver is a metallurgical
    entity that has been exhaustively studied and about which millions of
    facts are known. 

    23.6 implies that a minimum silver content of 92.5% would make any
    alloy "silver" or "solid silver" as well as "Sterling silver" or
    "Sterling" - clearly that can't be right unless "silver", "solid
    silver" and Sterling silver" are interchangeable terms ! 

    Sec. 296. - Standard of fineness of silver articles; deviation again
    refers only to fineness : 

    http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/15/296.html 

    and doesn't provide a definition of Sterling silver either. 

    However I'm either right or wrong - there's a long-standing legal
    definition of Sterling silver in UK law or there isn't. 

    I'm doing some digging around and will post the results when they
    come to hand. 

    Phase diagrams are well and good, but I don't see how they would
    support your position. 

    I don't intend the phase diagrams to support my contention that
    there is a legal definition of Sterling silver Dave -  they simply
    show graphically a few of the more obvious reasons why, given the
    difference in physical and chemical characteristics between alloys
    from the silver-copper system and ( say ) the silver-lead or
    silver-sulphur systems,  it's ridiculous to allow the corresponding
    92.5% silver alloys to all be called "Sterling silver". The 92.5%
    silver -7.5% pop-tart analogy. 


cheers
Allan

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