sterling silver jewelry care

[Juliette N.]

Argentium is a good start. I use it a lot for flare cutting and “manual guilloche”, it cuts well and the cuts stay bright for a long time.

Great, thank you very much for sharing your experience

 

[Juliette N.]

In view of all the opinions the argentium seems to me favorable, it's sure now I'll start with the argentium.

 

[Juliette N.]

Hello, I come back because I learned a little about argentium. Indeed, I asked my caster but this one does not advise me because there was a problem with the germanium according to him which made the metal brittle, so the people of the trade were not more interested in it in Belgium. His experience dates from 10 years ago, do you think there have been adjustments since then? Thank you

 

[Goldjockey]

Hello, I come back because I learned a little about argentium. Indeed, I asked my caster but this one does not advise me because there was a problem with the germanium according to him which made the metal brittle, so the people of the trade were not more interested in it in Belgium. His experience dates from 10 years ago, do you think there have been adjustments since then? Thank you

My late brother James (Jim) used to cast with Argentium from Rio Grande. As you probably know castings are inherently more brittle than pieces fabricated from milled stock, so some brittleness is to be expected no matter what you are having cast. That being said, Jim's experience with Argentium was very positive. He made a lot of jewelry with it, and never complained about brittleness. Rio has very good technical staff, their own refinery and metallurgical capabilities (Academy Refining), and 30 years of experience with the Argentium alloy. You may want to try the argentium casting grain specifically formulated by Rio rather than having a caster attempt to duplicate the alloy in the melt. My own experience with casting shops is that while they are usually quite competent at casting, they typically aren't experts in metallurgy.

Argentium 935 Silver Casting Grain Technical Sheet - RioGrande

This reference sheet contains working properties and instructions for casting Argentium® Silver 935 casting grain.

www.riogrande.com

 

[rweigel]

In my experience it’s not the Germanium that makes the cast brittle. I had such problems when I used too small a torch to melt the alloy, thus adjusting the flame with too much oxygen to make it hotter. Nowadays I use a big torch with more BTU (=calories, for us Europeans) but less oxygen in the flame. Smooth, ductile and non-porous castings are the result. I use delft sand forms, steel kokilles and broom casting in bundles of toothpicks for casting.

Cheers

Ralf