Argentium Sterling Wholesaler or Manufacturer

Jewelry Discussion
1

My local jeweler’s supplier needs a wholesale or manufacturer of
Argentium silver. Does anyone know where to get it? Email me off-list
if necessary.

Thanks for your help.
Cathy

2

Cathy

You can argentium through stuller. But watch out!!! It is brittle
and will break apart when hot. I don’t like it much. bought enough
and only use it for things that don’t require much soldering or
annealing.

Good Luck,
Candy

3

all wholesalers carry it now. Hoover and Strong, handy and Harman,
stuller, david fell co., kitco, etc.

4

Hello Candy,

You can argentium through stuller. But watch out!!! It is brittle
and will break apart when hot.

I think you’ll find that there are a variety of ways to deal with
these types of problems. The short version is:

  • if your Argentium Sterling (AS) is brittle you are almost
    certainly quenching it when it is still too hot: generally speaking
    it needs to lose all redness before your quench.

  • if it breaks apart when you have it under the torch you are
    overheating it: AS has lower solidus and liquidus temps than regular
    sterling silver.

Since both of these problems are related to over-heating I’d suggest
you try doing your torch work under reduced lighting. I turn off my
overhead lights. That way you can judge the color temperatures much
better and thereby learn how to avoid overheating.

The bottom line is that if you are keenly aware of how hot your
metal is you should not be having these problems. AS is somewhat more
sensitive to overheating than regular sterling and successful use of
AS does reguire some adjustment in that regard. It’s not that big a
deal once you get used to it.

Some earlier versions of the alloy were… well, let’s just say that
the mix wasn’t quite right and they tended to be much more prone to
the brittleness and break-up problems you’ve mentioned. Current
formulations have corrected that.

Cheers,
Trevor F.
in The City of Light
Visit TouchMetal.com at http://www.touchmetal.com

5

All Argentium is made by Stern-Leach. The minimum order is 100
ounces.

Cynthia Eid

6

I’ve done a bit of reading, but I have still over $700 in sterling
silver in stock so Argentium is next year’s project, but I am also a
silversmith, and the query is: is Argentium Silver the appropriate
material for raising and forging (bowls/goblet and flatware/metal
art)?

K. David Woolley
Fredericton, NB
Diversiform Metal Art & Jewellery

7

the query is: is Argentium Silver the appropriate
material for raising and forging (bowls/goblet and flatware/metal
art)?

David, if you’d like to see another persons experience with this I’d
invite you to check out the blog at my site. One of my first
projects with Argentium Sterling (AS) was to forge a (crude) table
spoon from a solid billet (see the “Spoon” posts). I’ve since done
several anti-clastic projects in AS.

IMHO AS is ideal for raising and forging: no firescale (IOW no
firecoat, little or no pickling) and higher ductility are VERY sweet
things when it comes to this kind of work.

Cynthia Eid has also done some nice work in this area. Check out her
holloware gallery at cynthiaeid.com

Cheers,
Trevor F.
in The City of Light
Visit TouchMetal.com at http://www.touchmetal.com

8 
is Argentium Silver the appropriate material for raising and
forging (bowls/goblet and flatware/metal art)?

Yes it is. I have cast Argentium into ingots and then cold forged it
into flatware. It worked well for that, although it is hard to read
how hot it is when you anneal it - even in a darkened room. I ended
up using a normally lit room and magic marker as a temperature
indicator. Although I often hot forge silver, I did not even try to
hot forge Argentium. Previous experience at soldering Argentium was
that it seemed to shatter easily when I put pressure on it while
hot.

It should raise well, but have not done that yet.

Mitch Adams