Sterling silver. What it is?

Ster­ling sil­ver has excel­lent con­sumer char­ac­ter­is­tics. From it they mint­ed a met­al means of pay­ment, pro­duced cut­lery, made inte­ri­or items, acces­sories and cloth­ing acces­sories. Met­al enjoys spe­cial hon­or in jew­el­ry.

Choos­ing a lig­a­ture is not an easy task.

What is 925 ster­ling sil­ver, why was it cre­at­ed at all? AT XVII cen­tu­ry, pure sil­ver was mined in sig­nif­i­cant vol­umes, which sur­passed gold in val­ue. How­ev­er, the met­al dark­ened in air and was quite soft. It was decid­ed to find a com­po­si­tion that would be dis­tin­guished by mechan­i­cal strength and resis­tance to atmos­pher­ic con­di­tions.

The com­po­si­tion allowed the intro­duc­tion of only one met­al. Sci­en­tists tried to get rid of black­en­ing, reduce poros­i­ty, make wear resis­tance high­er. Ini­tial­ly, cop­per was intro­duced into the lig­a­ture, then it was replaced with zinc, plat­inum, the mix­ture was cor­rect­ed with boron and sil­i­con. The addi­tion of ger­ma­ni­um elim­i­nat­ed the dark­en­ing of sil­ver, plat­inum pro­vid­ed an increase in the strength para­me­ter, but the final cost of the alloy increased sig­nif­i­cant­ly. Cad­mi­um “helped” make sil­ver more expen­sive than gold.

Manufacturing process

Ster­ling sil­ver is pro­duced by mix­ing “pure” argen­tum and cop­per, heat­ing the mix­ture to 893.4°C. The result­ing mate­r­i­al after clean­ing and chem­i­cal clar­i­fi­ca­tion retains a shiny sur­face for a long time. Jew­el­ry cre­at­ed in the past from it can be stored for cen­turies and passed on to the next gen­er­a­tions in the form of fam­i­ly rar­i­ties.

925 ster­ling sil­ver — what is it? Alloy hav­ing 92.5% Ag 999th sam­ple and 7.5% cop­per. In terms of weight, this means the fol­low­ing: to obtain 1000 parts of the alloy, 925 parts were tak­en Ag and 75 pieces Cu along with oth­er impu­ri­ties.

Advantages of the modified argentum

• Cor­rodes with pro­longed expo­sure to light and humid air.
• Has high strength.
• It retains anti­sep­tic prop­er­ties, there­fore it has a pos­i­tive effect on the body.
• It is well forged and takes the desired shape, which is valu­able in jew­el­ry.
• Dif­fers in dura­bil­i­ty at stor­age and a prac­ti­cal­i­ty at oper­a­tion.
• Easy to clean.
• Due to the low price, it is avail­able to most peo­ple who want to buy jew­el­ry or oth­er prod­ucts.

Recommendation

Exces­sive mois­ture in the air and active sun­light can change the col­or of the met­al. A sim­i­lar result is formed upon con­tact with chem­i­cal media. It is advis­able to store prod­ucts in the dark. Each type of jew­el­ry is rec­om­mend­ed to be wrapped in nat­ur­al fab­ric and placed in a com­mon stor­age place. The ide­al option is a tight­ly closed wood­en box.

Where such silver is in demand

925 ster­ling sil­ver has been used in the jew­el­ry indus­try. Light­weight open­work rings, neck­laces and ear­rings, chains with a thin inter­lac­ing, ele­gant pen­dants, bright design­er tiaras, and attrac­tive bracelets are obtained from it.

The alloy is in demand in the man­u­fac­ture of table set­ting items: forks, spoons, glass­es, cups, knives, saucers, trays.

Col­lectible coins are mint­ed from hard­ened met­al.

As a raw mate­r­i­al, it is excel­lent for mak­ing acces­sories: brooches, men’s tie pins, cuf­flinks, cig­a­rette cas­es, hair­pins, watch­es, pierc­ing ele­ments.

Sil­ver can­dle­sticks, fig­urines, pic­ture frames, etc. are involved in dec­o­rat­ing the premis­es.

In the online store you will find a vari­ety of jew­el­ry, rang­ing from clas­sics to Pan­do­ra. Fans of loy­al prices are rec­om­mend­ed to look in the sec­tion “Prod­ucts with a dis­count”.

Video on this top­ic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iVjPG5RwCw