[TheForge] silver wire questions

[Todd Rich]

On Tue, 17 Dec 2002, terry l. ridder wrote:

> hello;
>
> in going through a box of misc. items in the shop i found two spools of
> labeled jeweler wire silver b&s 30 1000 ft each. date on the label is
> 4-29-80. 22 year old silver wire looks like new to me.

Hey, want to sell some of it?  I also work in silver too.
>
> i am assuming the b&s 30 is the brown & sharpe wire gauge.
> there is also a .925 ss marking on the labels, i have no clue what that
> would stand for.
>
.925 ss is telling you it is Sterling Silver, which is 92.5% silver and
7.5% copper.  This is pretty much the standard grade of silver to work
with.  The copper adds quite a bit of hardness to the silver.

> i cut 4 six inch pieces and braided them in a 4 wire braid.
>
>    a   b
>
>    c   d
>
> a goes to d
> d goes to a
> b goes to c
> c goes to b
> repeat
>
> granted the braid is small but sparkles very nicely.
>
> my questions are:
>
> if i were to make 4 strand silver 'rope' ( per dave brown's excellent
> instructions ) and then silver crosses out of this wire:
>
> how do i hardend it since even braiding it did not seem to do much
> toward hardending it? i mean this wire is soft.
>
It is probably fully annealed.  Working it will harden it some, however,
that guage of wire probably won't get that stiff, given how thin it is.
Silver really doesn't get that hard.  There is a method of heat hardening
sterling, but I don't remember the procedure off the top of my head.
However, just heating and quenching the silver will soften it.

> what should the care of the silver be to avoid tarnishing?
>
Not sure what would work best for you, I use flitz or simichrome for
occasional polishing, or you could use some of the dip products that
remove tarnish (if it gets tanished often, realize it is eating away some
of the metal each time you use the tarnish remover).

> my only past experience with silver was helping my daughter melt it for
> casting rings and other small jewelery items. ( i melted it for her she
> did the rest. )
>
> how would i determine the purity of the silver?
> is it alloyed with anything?
> if it is alloyed with what?
>
As I mentioned earlier, the .925 ss told you what the alloy is.

Any other questions?

> --
> Terry L. Ridder ><>
			Todd