Oft associated with beautiful tableware, coins, and silverware, silver alloys and pure silver are striving hard to meet an ever-increasing world demand. From the world of electronics to celebrity circles, this metal and its alloys are surely in high demand.

Here, we take a quick look at how wholesale silver jewelry New York is making heads turn, mainly because of silver’s unique attributes. Silver – the Special Metal

Just like gold, also a precious metal, silver is extremely ductile and malleable. Harder than gold, this lustrous metal is softer than copper, and can be hammered into sheets that are so thin that an inch high stack would require at least 100,000 of them for fulfilling the purpose. Silver boasts of a specific gravity of 10.5, is harder than gold, and has with a melting point of 960°C / 1760°F - about 200°F below the melting point of gold.

With purity levels that generally goes up to 99.95% (that is nominally considered 100%), commercially available silver is rarely pure silver. The main reason behind it being used as an alloy, and not in its purest form, is that being ductile, goods made of pure silver are prone to damages. Today, there are several silver alloy compositions that are being put to use for silver jewellery, or as electrical conductors and brazing compositions.

Addition of Copper to Silver Appropriately hardened by alloying; in most cases, copper is used as the favorite metal for improving upon the ductility of silver. Copper is used for the production of sterling silver, a useful alloy that contains a minimum of 92.5% silver too. Silver-copper modifications and eutectic also contain other elements like tin, cadmium, phosphorus, zinc, and/ or lithium. Widely applied for brazing purposes, especially where strong joints with relatively good resistance for corrosion are a must, sterling silver is used in places where higher strength measures (at elevated temperatures) are required.

The “Sterling” Mark Sterling silver represents the most respected and best known quality marking that’s in use today. The mark “Sterling” assures buyers that the silver purchased by them has 92.5% of pure metal by weight; and there is absolutely no stipulation regarding the remaining 7.5%.

Oxidation of Silver Silver is known for its affinity for oxygen that increases with temperature. So, whenever molten silver is exposed to air, it ends up absorbing about a whopping twenty-two times its total volume in oxygen. Also, just like silver, copper forms copper-oxide when exposed to oxygen and depicts a high affinity towards the same too. This is the reason why air has to be excluded during the entire casting process; unless internal voids or porosity serve to be a characteristic of the cast metal. Overall, oxidation has to avoided when silver-copper alloys or sterling silver are melted for casting into different products.

Application of Silver Alloys Silver alloys are also intended for industrial applications, wherein they are generally characterized by their high electrical conductivity and high mechanical / functional properties. The silver alloys that are specifically designed for manufacturing electrical contacts boast of high corrosion /erosion resistance, and high temperature resistance. Here, alloy additives are being used for meeting these requirements; especially in the case of products that require dispersion hardening or precipitation hardening. Such mechanisms are popular in copper alloys and platinum alloys.

Why Silver? Among the many precious metallic materials that are put into use in dental applications, such as palladium, gold, and silver; buyers find significant differences in context with the strength, elasticity modulus, coefficient of thermal expansion, price, density, melting temperature, and hardness of these materials. When it comes to costs, silver alloys are usually regarded as cheaper choices in relation to other precious materials.

ADDRESS P&K Jewelry, Inc Broadway (Between 28th & 29th Street.) New York, NY