[Jewelry making - Article 00595] - Re: [Orchid] Argentium silver adventures and questions

[Trevor F]

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Hello Cynthia, Marty,

>>    if you ever get your Argentium Sterling and your regular Sterling
>>    Silver mixed up, putting it in a dirty oven for a time will help
>>    you separate it out. The regular Sterling Silver will stay the same
>>    color and the Argentium will get a light brown coating on it. 

>     Marty, is this a typo? It makes no sense to me that the Argentium
>     would discolor, but the traditional sterling would not. 

    Reading Cynthia's response has prompted me to offer a few comments
    here. 

    Marty, I agree with Cynthia. In my own side-by-side tests equally
    treated (as in cleaned and sanded) pieces of regular sterling and
    Argentium Sterling (AS) do not produce the results you've observed.
    The regular sterling will often go quite dark or even black while the
    AS will only yellow or brown at most. 

    That said I can imagine that if the regular sterling had had the
    silver "raised" on it then your results might well be possible. But
    in this case you're kind of comparing apples and oranges: the regular
    sterling would have to have been deliberately, or otherwise,
    depletion gilded before doing this. 

    That said it doesn't seem too much of a stretch to imagine that you'd
    see what you've seen if you _were_ intentionally comparing depletion
    gilded regular sterling and AS. In my experience the AS has always
    yellowed at least a little during the full precip hardening process
    at 500 F (260 C) whereas fully depletion gilded regular sterling might
    well not show much color change at all. 

Cheers,
Trevor F.
in The City of Light
Visit TouchMetal.com at http://www.touchmetal.com
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