Today I decided to research a question I’ve been wondering about for quite some time now; how hard is Argentium Sterling® Silver compared to various karat gold? After doing quite a bit of searching on the WWW, I found two sites that helped me somewhat understand how the many alloys compare.
A great page to help understand the hardness of silver is from the Rio Grande Jewelry Supply. This page, from the Tips and Tricks section, was full of great information. One of the charts on the page shows the hardness in Vickers of Fine Silver, Sterling Silver, and Argentium Sterling® Silver. According to the chart Argentium Sterling® Silver can be both the softest and the hardest of the three.
http://www.riogrande.com/tips/all_tips.asp?offset=100
The technical guide offered at http://www.argentiumsilver.com/ gives the following information: After casting, if the flasks are left to air cool a hardness of approximately 100HV is achieved (this is what I prefer to do when I cast…it‘s very hard!). Precipitation Hardening will achieve a hardness of approximately 120HV.
Finding a good chart for gold (without getting into a bunch of technical data) was much harder. After quite a bit of searching, I found a web page that had a pretty good chart on the hardness of gold alloys. It’s from the U.K. so they show 9 karat gold instead of 10 karat gold as is used in the U.S.. The only thing I don’t like about this web page is it’s one of those that are hard to get out of once you are there.
http://www.24carat.co.uk/hardnessofgoldalloysframe.html
Note that gold doesn’t necessarily get harder as the karat weight goes down.
A great page to help understand the hardness of silver is from the Rio Grande Jewelry Supply. This page, from the Tips and Tricks section, was full of great information. One of the charts on the page shows the hardness in Vickers of Fine Silver, Sterling Silver, and Argentium Sterling® Silver. According to the chart Argentium Sterling® Silver can be both the softest and the hardest of the three.
http://www.riogrande.com/tips/all_tips.asp?offset=100
The technical guide offered at http://www.argentiumsilver.com/ gives the following information: After casting, if the flasks are left to air cool a hardness of approximately 100HV is achieved (this is what I prefer to do when I cast…it‘s very hard!). Precipitation Hardening will achieve a hardness of approximately 120HV.
Finding a good chart for gold (without getting into a bunch of technical data) was much harder. After quite a bit of searching, I found a web page that had a pretty good chart on the hardness of gold alloys. It’s from the U.K. so they show 9 karat gold instead of 10 karat gold as is used in the U.S.. The only thing I don’t like about this web page is it’s one of those that are hard to get out of once you are there.
http://www.24carat.co.uk/hardnessofgoldalloysframe.html
Note that gold doesn’t necessarily get harder as the karat weight goes down.
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