Karat Fineness Postscript

I wish to apologize for boring any of you with my last post “An
Observation on the meaning of Karat fineness.” It was not intended
to bore you or the customer, for it was never meant to reach the
customer level. It was simply an investigation into the mindset of
the Orchid community.

I was curious how others perceived karat fineness when they were
looking at a karat gold object. I was questioning how many others
thought in terms of volume, instead of weight. I wanted to know if
others thought of 10K gold as containing only 25% gold by volume,
instead of the 41.7% normally stated (weight assumed). It was
simply a mental awakening in what may, or may not be, obvious to you
and others.

To think is to live. -Cicero

Charles Heick
Cincinnati, Ohio

Hi Charles;

    I wish to apologize for boring any of you with my last post
"An Observation on the meaning of Karat fineness."  It was not
intended to bore you or the customer, 

Personally, I found the very interesting and useful. I
always realized that the proportion of gold by volume was not the
same as it was by weight, but I wouldn’t have taken the time to
figure out what that was. For me, it’s intersting I
saved the post you wrote for future reference. I often drop little
“factoids” about materials when I talking with customers. I think it
conveys to them that you are involved in your work enough to have
sought out in-depth knowledge of the subject. I try not to “hold
forth” but just make little aside comments like “14 karat is an alloy
of 14/24ths gold by weight, the other 10/24ths being other metals.
Adding different metals to the gold strengthens the metal as well as
achives different colors of gold”. I think customers are interested
in things like that, as long as I don’t start showing off. I was
thinking today, that it might be nice to have a little sign printed
up for the counter, a chart that lists the contents, by both weight
and volume, of different metals used in jewelry. Maybe have some of
the typical hallmarks next to the items. Some of you may have
thought about having a newsletter to send out to your customers
informing them of some of your “events”. Little articles like
Charles’ would fit in nicely in that format.

David L. Huffman