New alloy for welding sterling and Argentium Sterling

company that is allowed to make snake anti-venom. I think another
company is trying to get in the game and it can't come soon
enough. 
So in USA, if you get a snake bite from a poisonous snake, you
will get a bill from 150,000 dollars to 500,000 dollars. Most of
the cost is from the anti-venom drug cost. 

That story caught my attention, simply because it sounded so
outrageous. I found via Google that in the states, BTG, the
manufacturer of the most commonly used antivenom for pit viper bites
charges around $2500 to $2700 per vial of the stuff. It’s quite
complex to make, so perhaps that’s not a totally greed based price.
Treating a bit can typically take around ten vials of the stuff over
a period of time, so the drug costs, at wholesale, would be typically
around 25,000. That’s a lot, but I know a number of drugs with
similarly high prices, especially those that are needed to be
stocked, but used only rarely, and in this case, have a shelf life of
just a few years. The outlandish part is that you seem to be correct
in the amount of the bill the patient gets, which can be, at least in
one story I found, around 20 thousand per vial, or a markup of about
8 times, which the hospitals/parmacies justify via the costs to
store, prepare from the vial, and administer the drug. So it’s not
the drug companies that are making the bulk of that markup, but the
hospitals and pharmacies. Yay for American Health care, huh. That
kind of pricing no doubt has something to do with our costs for
health insurance. And high drug prices are not limited to esoteric
things like snake anitvenom. A bottle of the insulin I use has a
list price of around 280 dollars a bottle (I go through a bit over 4
bottles a month).

Fortunately, my insurance picks up most, with my copay being 35 a
month. The kicker is that i remember the price of insulin back as
recently as the late 90s, as being somewhere in the 50 dollar range.
It’s gone up a lot faster than inflation.

Kinda makes our business, selling just ho hum diamonds and gold and
other apparently not so precious things, seem pretty cheap. Maybe
we’re doing it wrong. Perhaps what the nation needs is luxury
insurance, so everyone has a modest (subsidized of course, folks)
luxury insurance premium every month, and all but 20 percent of the
price we charge for our jewelry would be paid by the insurance. So we
could routinely use a 5 to 8 times markup over our costs, and nobody
would complain. Ferget that triple key crap… :slight_smile:

Is it necessary to heat treat Continuum to improve hardness and
durability compared to regular sterling silver? So when Stuller
describes the hardnessof Continuum to be between Sterling silver and
14k as cast hardness, that means it is significantly harder than
sterling silver? I also wish there would be more information
available and more stock wire.

Interesting that you can find a wholesale price because it is not
obtainable for anyone who really needs it. The reality is, because
only one company has the FDA approval, both the hospital and the
manufacturer have all the leverage in the world.

So reality is, 20K per vile which is how a boy in Carolin got a 1.6
million dollar price. The boy needed 75 or 80 vials, at 20K each. So
I think the final bill was 1.6 million dollars.

http://www.ganoksin.com/gnkurl/ep820h

If more than one company is allowed to make it, then there is less
shortage and less leverage for the pricing.

So hopefully having more than one Germanium silver alloy gives us
more leverage for pricing and features, :slight_smile:

Birgit- It’s harder than sterling as cast even before heat treating.
I ran some experiments and found that heating it at 800F for about 45
minutes and then quenching gave the best results. On the link below
they say to anneal first before heat hardening. I’ve not bothered
with that part because I mostly fabricate and my stuff is already
annealed by the time I’m done making something. On our kiln we have
at home I just put it on #1 for awhile. We found that it’s easier
than gold or platinum to set stones in even after heat hardening.

There is plenty of sheet and wire available. If you have any
questions about working with Continuum as I did when I first started
using it, I found that the folks at Stuller in the metals dept were
more than willing to take my questions both in email and over the
phone.

I use it when I want a white metal that will wear well without the
cost and weight of white gold and platinum as well as with more
spring than platinum or sterling.

Have fun and make lots of jewelry.

Jo Haemer
timothywgreen.com

The snake anti-venom serum discussion really caught my attention,
particularly the cost. A friend recently had a large dog treated for
snake bite (NM rattler) and tells me the serum was $1000 a pop for
her dog (he recovered).

(I know this is off topic but in a roundabout way ties into
marketing)

Debbie