Designer Jewelry Experts

What Is Sterling Silver

Fine silver (99.9% pure) is very malleable and too soft for producing jewelry and other accessories. Bracelets, rings, pendants & other forms of silver jewelry cannot effectively be crafted from pure silver without the presence of alloy metal additives to reinforce its atomic structure. To employ silver as a viable metal, it has to be alloyed with copper to increase its hardness. Due to the similar natural appearances of both metals, the alloying process can be executed without severely affecting the stretchability and appearance of the precious metal. However, as the percentage purity of silver decreases , the sticky issue of tarnishing arises, creating the need to find an efficient equilibrium balance between the percentage content of Silver and the cheaper metal used in the alloy couple.

The optimal solution, as discovered by expert chemists, is sterling silver: an alloy of silver containing 92.5% by mass of silver and 7.5% by mass of other metals, usually Copper, Steel or Brass. The sterling silver standard has a minimum purity level of 925 (ie: 92.5% purity). Given the high percentage purity of sterling silver is stringently maintained, sterling silver is the most suitable material for use in the manufacture of jewelry and high grade luxury cutlery used by royalty.

Silver sits almost at the bottom of the Electrochemical series. As such, it does not react easily with oxygen or water at ordinary conditions of temperature, and so does not readily form the problematic silver oxide layer . However, sterling silver is not a compound, and other metals in the alloy, usually copper, will react with ambient oxygen, tarnishing the overall appearance of the sterling silver alloy. The upside, however, is that tarnish is easily reversible by polishing: a process which removes the exterior coat of CuO obscuring the illustrious sheen of the underlying alloy. The one-step elimination of the tarnish has resulting in 925 sterling silver becoming the industrial benchmark of consumer choice in jewelry craftsmanship.

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The writer is a New York-based veteran jewelry craftsman with 10 years of craftsmanship behind him. He is an expert on jewelry craft and gothic fashion analysis. To find out more about selecting best grade replicas made from real sterling silver jewelry, visit Gothic Jewelry

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