Good day,
Attached is a chart of the majority of tarnish-resistant silver
alloys on the market. Each alloy listed contains the following
characteristics:
General Alloy Composition
Suitable for What Processes
Melting Temperature Range
Color
Hardness (as cast)
Hardness (work-hardened)
Available Forms
Special Features
Credit: This chart originally appeared in the MJSA Journal. For more
go to mjsa.org.
I hope you find it useful,
Jeff Herman
hhtp://www.hermansilver.com
http://www.ganoksin.com/gnkurl/ep7z2a [PDF file]
This chart seems to have been compiled from industry literature
rather than a testing lab, so it’s difficult to figure out how these
different alloys compare. If tarnish-resistance is variously
described as “good”, “high”, “superior”, “exceptional” and “like 10K
gold”, is that an ordered ranking, or just a collection of marketing
superlatives? Has anybody actually tried all (or most of) these
alloys, who can shed a little light on this?
Andrew Werby
This chart seems to have been compiled from industry literature rather than a testing lab,
For more you may want to peruse the following papers
presented and published by the Santa Fe Symposium over the past few
years.
A NEW PARADIGM FOR TARNISH TESTING IN STERLING SILVER ALLOYS - by
Samuel A. Davis - Santa Fe Symposium 2007 pages 125 - 148
EFFECT OF ALLOYING ELEMENTS AND TARNISHING EFFECTS IN STERLING
SILVER ALLOYS - by Ajit Menon Santa Fe Symposium 2007 pages 421 - 434
TARNISH PROOF STERLING SILVER: UNDERSTANDING THE LIMITATIONS - by
Dr. Joseph Tunick Strauss - Santa Fe Symposium 2008 pages 307 - 326
TARNISH PHENOMENA OF SILVER: CHEMICAL INTERACTIONS, ANALYSIS METHODS
AND REAL LIFE ESTIMATION by Andrea Trentin, Silvano Bortolami,
Alessandro Zocco, Mauro Di Siro - Santa Fe Symposium 2008 pages 327 -
376
AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF NEW STERLING
SILVER ALLOYS - by Mark Grimwade & K Paynter - Santa Fe Symposium
2009 pages 197 - 214
THE TARNISHING OF SILVER ALLOYS: CAUSES AND POSSIBILITIES - by
Andrea Basso, Riccardo Bertoncello, Fabio Bottelli, Jacobo Carli,
Joerg Fischer - Buchner, Massimo Poliero - Santa Fe Symposium 2010
pages 1-25
My personal favorite test was to put the silver pieces in one of
those cheap Chinese made jewelry boxes for 24 hours and everything
would tarnish. Theglue used in the boxes out gassed chlorine and
even tarnished 10 & 14K pieces. I think they finally stopped using
the glue.
Cheers & regards,
Jim Sivertsen
United Technical Dept.
For more you may want to peruse the following papers presented and published by the Santa Fe Symposium over the past few years.
I would recommend all the articles you mentioned but I think Joe
Strauss’s may be the most enlightening about the difficulty that no
one has gotten around in making a tarnish resistant sterling silver
alloy. Namely all of them are 92.5% silver so they all will tarnish.
Jim
James Binnion
James Binnion Metal Arts