[Jewelry making - Article 00974] - Re: [Orchid] Argentium silver crocheting, hardening

[Trevor F]

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>     I am surprised by the statement that it work hardens quickly. I
>     have not had that perception, myself. I find the workability to be
>     terrific. 

Hello Cindy,

    I totally agree.  I think that it's probably worthwhile to reiterate
    a couple things about Peter's statement: 

    (1) it work hardens faster _initially_, in other words if you graph
    hardness vs amount worked (in terms of percentage distortion?) the
    ramp up of Argentium is steeper at the beginning. 

    (2) the hardness curve for Argentium soon hits a "plateau" whereafter
    it is hardening noticeably less rapidly and to a lesser amount than
    regular sterling. 

    In other words, the worked hardness of regular sterling will soon
    pass that of Argentium and (presumably) continue to rise whereas
    Argentium's hardness curve will stay comparatively flat. 

    So for most of the metal's working time it is less work hardened than
    regular sterling and that is what we care about and what we've seen. 

    The fact that Argentium is getting a little harder a little faster at
    the beginning of it's work cycle isn't really that significant to us,
    especially because we apparently don't even notice it (I know I
    don't). In other words Peter's observation is an interesting
    technical fact that may not have a lot of real-world significance to
    the type of work we are doing. 

    I've done a test where I rolled a piece of Argentium from dead soft
    after an anneal right through to the point where it was stress
    fracturing itself into pieces simply because I wanted to see how far
    it would go without annealing. 

    I started with a 5 mm x 6mm x 95 mm billet and was able to roll it
    out to 2mm square wire before the stress fracturing was becoming a
    serious problem. In my experience there is no way that regular
    sterling would even come close to repeating that kind of ductility.
    For me this was the proof of Argentium's higher workability than
    standard sterling. 

    From my own experiences rolling standard sterling I have noticed that
    it reaches a point where it is very springy and unyielding. The
    Argentium never did. It was stress fracturing into pieces and it
    never hit that same "spring steel" point. 

    Of course all this means that one needs to adjust their work habits
    in order to learn and incorporate Argentium's different
    characteristics but one would expect the same with any new alloy, gold
    or silver. (I know you know this Cindy, I'm just mentioning it for
    others who have less Argentium experience). 

    These and other Argentium issues are discussed on my "Working With
    Argentium Silver" blog at http://www.touchmetal.com 

Cheers,
Trevor F.
in The City of Light

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