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Baking Silver

Jewelry Discussion
#1

First of all I want to give everyone a big thank you! This website
is amazing…I cannot believe how helpful everyone is and I SO
appreciate it! I am probably getting really annoying with all of my
questions. However, I have one more. There was discussion about
baking argentium silver to keep it looking “fresh”, my question is
can you also do this with ss and gf? I have the problem with the
satin finish becoming dulled over time and it seems like this could
work as a prevention. Does anyone know if this will work and if so
at what temp. should I bake it…and for how long? Oh, and
also…can you use scothbrite on gold-filled or only silver…i
don’t really know what it is.

Thanks everyone!!!

Laura Jackson
Laura J. Designs

#2 
There was discussion about baking argentium silver to keep it
looking "fresh", my question is can you also do this with ss and
gf?

The “baking” is to precipitation harden the Argentium. This (it is
speculated by one of our resident Argentium genius gurus) could also
have the desirable side effect of “raising” the germanium to kick in
the non-tarnish aspect of the Argentium, which some of us are
beginning to see may be a problem with commercially supplied stock.

Because there is no germanium in either traditional sterling or
gold-filled stock, it wouldn’t do a thing to protect the finish on
either material. Also, I’m pretty sure sterling requires a higher
temp to precipitation harden than does the Argentium - I don’t think
you could precipitation harden standard sterling in a conventional
oven at all, or at least not as easily as Argentium. Since
gold-filled is 14k or 12k gold overlaid on brass, I can’t say what
its characteristics are. I’ve been wondering myself about trying to
anneal gold-filled wire.

Sojourner