Has anyone done pickle-depletion on standard 9K gold? I was
wondering if it would come out yellow—have a feeling it would have
too much white metal in the alloy and would come out pale. The
pre-Colombian depletion gilding of Central and South America got
very yellow surfaces from very low carat gold, but they mostly used
tombaga which was gold/copper with only trace elements of silver.
But there were also greenish-white silver/gold/copper alloys with a
high silver content which were much more common (especially in Peru)
which were (properly) depletion gilded. I thought heating and
pickling 9K many times might give a low cost gold look withou
minimal effort. Also. are there a lot of different 9K gold alloys on
the market? It would be nice to be able to get a mostly-copper one
for depletion-pickling.
Janet in Jerusalem