What is Silver?
What is Silver?
For many of us, we have heard the term silver through advertising, seen the .925 stamp on a piece of jewellery or a piece of tableware, but not really known what it is.
Here is a small easy byte of information, that is hopefully helpful and easy to keep in mind next time your buy or are given a piece of Silver.
Starting at the basics silver is:
A. a chemical element: it has symbol Ag (from Latin argentum 'silver',) and has an atomic number of 47 on the Periodic Chart.
B. .a soft, white, lustrous transition metal which exhibits the highest electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and reflectivity of any metal.
C. is found in the Earth's crust in the pure, free elemental form ("native silver"), and as an alloy with gold and other metals, and in minerals such as argentite and chlorargyrite.
D. produced as a byproduct of copper, gold, lead, and zinc refining.
E. naturally occurring element. It is found in the environment combined with other elements such as sulphide, chloride, and nitrate.
F. in pure form is “silver” coloured, but silver nitrate and silver chloride are powdery white and silver sulphide and silver oxide are dark grey to black.
G. is classed as a Noble Metal along with rhenium, ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, platinum, and gold.
That’s the technical side of silver, but to a jeweller who hand makes jewellery it’s also a plentiful material; therefore, the cost is considerably lower than gold. Like gold it is a Noble Metal and can be used with gold and palladium to create jewellery.
In modern terms, in Australia there are available 4 most commonly available (from refiners) types of silver for jewellery making:
Fine Silver - stamped .999
Is the purest form of silver available for use with jewllery and is very malleable material, but can be hand forged to make it into wearable pieces. It also doesn’t oxidise, but it can wear quickly being such a soft material.
Sterling Silver – stamped .925
Is a mix of fine silver and copper, as the Purity mark indicates it is 925 parts out of a 1000 fine silver with 75 parts pure copper. Adding this copper to silver makes it less malleable, harder wearing but raises some interesting technical issues with oxidisation and fire scale after overheating the piece in manufacturing process.
Argentium – stamped .935
Argentium silver (patented in 1998) is a brand of modern tarnish-resistant silver alloys, containing either 93.5%, 94% or 96% silver. Argentium alloys replace some of the copper in the traditional sterling silver (92.5% silver + 7.5% copper) with the metalloid germanium. In Australia we replace the copper with ruthenium, the benefit is that the material doesn’t oxidise quickly and maintains a shine longer.
Silver Palladium – stamped .950
Is the newer kid on the block for silver alloys here in Australia, as its a mix of 95% fine silver with 5% palladium (from the platinum group of metals) is more tarnish resistant and does not fire scale or oxidise, is harder wearing than both sterling silver and Argentium and will maintain a polish longer, therefore will not need to be plated with rhodium, which is both costly and wasteful. This mix is the most expensive of the 4 groups of silver available in Australia for use by a jeweller.
I do hope you enjoy these small bytes of information about Silver.
If you have any questions about Silver, then do email me at hello@talltreesstudio.com and I will do my best to answer your questions.