TESTING YOUR METAL
Pure silver, known as Fine Silver, is soft and mainly used for
small embellishments only. If used for rings, for instance, the
ring would become scratched or bent out of shape very quickly
and any stones could easily fall out.
It is quite normal and expected for silver to tarnish and not a
fault of the metal, or the jeweller. How quickly a new piece
needs cleaning is down to the conditions in which it's kept; the
climate, your perfume, etc.. Keeping your jewellery clean, is part
and parcel of owning it.
Silver
More commonly used is Sterling Silver, an alloy, made from
mixing ne silver with a small amount of copper, a harder metal.
Whereas ne silver is 99.9% pure with just a trace of other
naturally occurring minerals, and marked with the numbers
.999, sterling silver is 92.5% ne silver with 7.5% copper and
marked as .925. This small amount of copper hardly changes
the colour at all, but makes a much harder wearing metal.
Copper is known as a 'dirty' metal and the addition of this small
amount changes the way the silver behaves making it necessary
to clean it. When silver gets dirty we notice it as tarnishing. This
happens because the copper within the silver is reacting to
naturally occurring chemicals present in the air, causing rst
yellowing then darkening when exposed for any length of time.
