6 Basics of Silver Jewelry to Help You Become an Industry Expert

6 Basics of Silver Jewelry to Help You Become an Industry Expert

Introduction of silver jewelry

   Silver jewelry refers to a variety of decorations made of silver, silver is one of the precious metals, silver jewelry using a variety of processing techniques, processed into a wide range of silver jewelry, basically divided into earrings, neck ornaments, hand ornaments, foot ornaments and apparel 5 major categories.
A. Silver is one of the precious metals, symbol Ag, color is silver-white, relative density 10.49, melting point (961 ° C), insoluble in alkali and most organic acids, soluble in nitric acid and hot sulfuric acid, sulfur dioxide with the air into the brown after the sulfur dioxide composite Ag2S. 925 silver is 92.5% of the silver to join the 7.5% of the copper and other alloys, so that the hardness of the silver and gloss. All have improved.
B. The color of silver, expressed in thousands. Full silver: silver not less than 990 ‰, stamped silver or S990. 925 silver: silver not less than 925 ‰, stamped S925.
★ Difference: 925 silver (sterling silver) for the international standard for silver jewelry, because of the enhanced hardness, so it is mainly used for the production of more complex craftsmanship of the fashion silver jewelry, while the foot of silver is relatively soft, is not suitable for inlaid gemstones or fine styles, generally used to make the traditional children’s locks children’s bracelets and bracelets for the elderly and so on.
C. Silver in the earth’s crust is very small, accounting for only 0.07ppm, in nature there is a single natural silver exists, but mainly compounds of the state. Elemental content in the sun: (ppm) 0.001 Elemental content in seawater: (ppm) Pacific surface 0.0000001
D. Silver minerals are mainly silver antimony sulfosalts-arsenic sulfosalts, pyroxene, tellurite, and selenite, followed by hornblende, and also natural silver. Silver is obtained by co-heating silver ore with table salt and water, then combining it with mercury to form silver amalgam, and evaporating the mercury. Or by the silver ore to cyanide alkali leaching and then add lead or zinc to make silver precipitation and produced.

Processing technology

1. Engraving technology: this is a kind of Chinese and foreign common gold and silver processing of ancient techniques. The gold and silver hammered thin, and then burin burin relief effect, or burin on the rich pattern. Generally speaking, the larger the area, the richer the effect of the performance.
2. Melting method: this technique is more common in Europe, only for silver production. The method is to use the physical properties of silver uniform and rapid thermal conductivity with fire blowing, the thin silver sheet heated to the moment of imminent melting, withdraw the heat source, the silver sheet on the production of uniform folds. Jewelry made of this material has a strong decorative effect and is extremely natural. There are also some molten drop-shaped effect of the ornaments, made of silver is also far better than gold, very charming.
3. Japanese wood grain metal: the main material is also silver, the manufacturing technique is very interesting, artistic and decorative effect is very strong. Approach is pure silver and different content of copper-silver alloy, nickel-silver alloy, copper, brass, red copper (sometimes with a small amount of gold), etc., layers of overlap welding, and then by rubbing treatment, and then spreading, the metal surface will appear in different colors of the texture effect.
4. Niello technology: this is a kind of alloy decoration technology used for silver. This technique is widely used in the Middle East, Russia and Thailand. Niello jewelry is burin or engraved silver design as a base, and then in the pattern filled with pure black copper-silver-lead alloy, polished to reveal the pattern of silver, black and white contrast is strong, revealing twelve points of dignity.

minerva silver bracelet&ring

1. Bright silver: by plating rhodium or other plating materials on the surface of silver jewelry, and make the silver have the same luster as white gold, and make the silver isolated from the air, as long as the plating layer is not destroyed, it can make the silver jewelry longer not oxidize, silver jewelry craft.
2. Original color silver (handmade silver): silver itself does not undergo any processing treatment, and through the semi-handmade or fully handmade crafts, so that silver jewelry has a simple and natural style.
3. Thai silver: vintage style silver jewelry, the appearance of the lack of brightness, the pursuit of an “ancient” and “old” “antique silver” effect. Through artificial vulcanization, so that the silver oxidation of the old, such silver style more personalized, highlighting the style of silver jewelry, and yellow and white gold jewelry is clearly distinguishable, a variety of styles, both noble and elegant type, but also casual personality type, loved by many fashionable people. Because of the maturity of such technology in Southeast Asian countries, it is commonly known as Thai silver.

Categorized by process

Imitation products

1、Silver-covered
Silver is the use of mechanical or other methods of silver wrapped around the surface of the metal products.
2、Silver plated jewelry
Silver-plated jewelry carcass is a copper-based metal alloy materials, often adding zinc and nickel and other metals, the surface of the silver-plated to improve the luster, the advantages of this material is better than the corrosion resistance of the copper material and the nature of the process is similar to K gold.
3、”Sandwich” silver jewelry
“Sandwich” silver jewelry is the testing center in July 2002 detected a new type of silver jewelry imitations, previously unreported. This kind of imitation products for the surface layer of silver, and the interior for the harmful element “cadmium” of the sandwich, cadmium is the most important feature of the element is the existence of a great safety hazard, it will cause permanent injury to the human nervous system.

Inspection methods

1、Observation quality
Mainly the overall shape of the jewelry, processing quality and other specific craft quality.
2、Mark
Jewelry mark should include manufacturer code, precious metal material name and content.
3、Weight of jewelry
Silver jewelry is sometimes based on the weight and processing fees to calculate the price, the weight of jewelry is one of the important indicators, according to the standard provisions of the weight of jewelry unit of measurement is grams, silver jewelry of each piece of tolerance for -0.05-0.04g.
4、Silver content
Silver content in jewelry is an important indicator of its quality. There are many kinds of testing methods for silver content, which can be divided into chemical analysis methods and instrumental analysis methods. According to the detection process whether the jewelry was damaged, can be divided into non-destructive testing method and loss detection method, in the jewelry quality supervision department of the daily inspection is generally based on non-destructive testing method, density method combined with X-fluorescence spectrometry, electron microprobe and other large-scale instrumental analysis.

Effectiveness of Silver Jewelry

    The Compendium of Materia Medica records: “Silver dust, pungent, flat, poisonous; raw silver, pungent, cold, non-toxic.” Because silver ions are easy to combine with sulfhydryl groups in proteins, so it will make bacteria die due to the inactivation of respiratory enzymes, however, the nature of silver is quite stable, it is difficult to “release” silver ions, and, in addition, proteins are also an important part of the human body. It is not only economically valuable and aesthetically pleasing, but it can also be used as a tool for detecting poison. The use of silver can detect food is not poisonous (this is because silver is easy and ancient commonly used poison arsenic (As2O3) can react to produce black arsenic sulfide, but this does not mean that silver can absorb the so-called “toxin”), easy to identify with the naked eye. B.C., the ancients knew that silver can accelerate the healing of wounds, prevention of infection, water purification and preservation of antiseptic effect. It can indeed prevent the growth of bacteria, but in addition to the function of no evidence, similar to the “jade can be antiseptic,” the same statement, just the ancient people on the natural sciences is too little research to reach an inaccurate conclusion. Silver ions have excellent sterilization effect, general antibiotics can only play a role in the average of 6 kinds of germs, but silver ions can destroy 650 kinds of germs. However, silver ions are heavy metal ions and water sterilized with silver salts is never suitable for drinking.

Antique Silver Jewelry
Silverjewelry Technique
sterling silver flower neclace

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