[Jewelry making - Article 01038] - Re: [Orchid] Chlorine bleach

[James Binnion]

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>         Some months ago we had a thread that mentioned how distructive
>     chlorine was to silver and gold. Someone mentioned that she did a
>     lot of swimming in a pool and was repeatedly losing the prongs to
>     her expensive solitare engagement ring. 

    This is caused by stress corrosion cracking it is most common in
    white golds in high stress areas like prongs where they are bent
    over the stone for more details see the article at
    http://www.hooverandstrong.com/articles/template.php?id=71 

>         More recently someone mentioned that they were using chlorine
>     bleach to get a patina on silver and again someone wrote that the
>     bleach was distructive in that it was basically removing everything
>     in the sterling that wasn't fine silver. 

    I do not belive the bleach is removing base metals.  I belive what
    is happening is it is making silver chloride on the surface of the
    piece. Silver chloride is photo reactive and it turns a dark purple
    to black color upon exposure to light. 

>         We've been  having a thread about depletion guilding on silver
>     for reticulation and/or kum-boo. Do you see where I am going with
>     this? 
>
>         If we do the normal depletion guild using the torch and pickle
>     then when we are done we have a fine silver surface but immediately
>     underneath we have black oxides. If we deplete a reasonably thick
>     piece of sterling with chlorine bleach it would seem that we would
>     still get the fine silver skin but would not have the oxides. 

    I think you are stuck with using acids to remove the copper oxide
    formed during heating bleach is not going to do what you want 

-- 
Jim Binnion

James Binnion Metal Arts
Phone (360) 756-6550
Toll Free (877) 408 7287
Fax (360) 756-2160
http://www.mokume-gane.com
jbin AT mokume-gane.com
Member of the Better Business Bureau


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