[Jewelry making - Article 01432] - Re: [Orchid] Easy Telling Brass wire from gold wire?

[Len and Judy Bjorkman]

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    Karen, years ago, I bought a little bottle of silver testing
    solution (JSP; #gt41) which is handy for identifying base metals. You
    clean the metal first, then put a drop on it -- base metal will
    produce a greenish foam, silver a creamy white. I assume that gold
    might give results similar to silver. The solution seems to be some
    sort of nasty acid -- don't get it on anything else. Another part of
    the problem is that the wire might be gold-filled, in which case
    filing a groove into the center of it would be good. 

    Another test method might be to rub a bit of wire known to be brass
    on a matte black stone, then rub a streak of the unknown wire on the
    same stone. Put a little dilute nitric acid on each one and compare
    the rate of disappearance of the two streaks. 

    But probably others will have simpler ways of doing this! 

All the best,
Judy Bjorkman
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