[Jewelry making - Article 00073] - Re: [Orchid] Baking Silver

[Zen Sojourner]

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>     There was discussion about baking argentium silver to keep it
>     looking "fresh", my question is can you also do this with ss and
>     gf? 

    The "baking" is to precipitation harden the Argentium. This (it is
    speculated by one of our resident Argentium genius gurus) could also
    have the desirable side effect of "raising" the germanium to kick in
    the non-tarnish aspect of the Argentium, which some of us are
    beginning to see may be a problem with commercially supplied stock.

    Because there is no germanium in either traditional sterling or
    gold-filled stock, it wouldn't do a thing to protect the finish on
    either material. Also, I'm pretty sure sterling requires a higher
    temp to precipitation harden than does the Argentium - I don't think
    you could precipitation harden standard sterling in a conventional
    oven at all, or at least not as easily as Argentium. Since
    gold-filled is 14k or 12k gold overlaid on brass, I can't say what
    its characteristics are. I've been wondering myself about trying to
    anneal gold-filled wire. 

Sojourner

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