GOLD...GOLD...WE FOUND GOLD!!!
More than any other word in the English language, the little four letter word "gold" conjures up images like no other. Images of Midas, Solomon, grizzled old bearded men swishing silt in a pan along a stream, bricks of gleaming ore stacked high in Fort Knox, rich burnished yellow shimmering in sunlight….gold in every form has fired the imagination of wealth and riches for four millennia. Even school children know what it is and is there anyone anywhere in the civilized world who can hear "14 or 18 karat" and not immediately think "gold" and imagine jewelry? It is the most commonly used metal in making fine, and sometimes not so fine, jewelry. But how many know that gold can come in scores of colors and shades, a half dozen degrees of fineness, or that pure gold is so soft it can be bent and broken between the fingers and almost never is used to make jewelry?
CARROTS, CARATS, AND KARATS
Everyone knows the little yellow-orange cluster of things sitting between the fresh spinach and clumps of broccoli in the supermarket display are carrots. Most know that a carat is related to diamonds and think it has something to do with the size of the stone. It is and it does not. And as for karats, no it is not a German spelling of carat.
Assuming there is no confusion about carrots, let's put carat where it belongs. Most people think the word "carat" refers to the size of a gemstone but it really describes the weight of a stone. A perfectly proportioned (round) 1 carat diamond is 6.50mm wide. But it is also possible for a 1-carat diamond to be 6mm or 7mm wide because of the depth of the stones.
When most of us think of a 1-carat stone, we have a mental image of a stone that is that perfect gem....6.50mm in size. That's just the way we all think and that is the way all jewelry settings are calibrated, too, because of these mental images we all have of gemstone sizes based on standard diamond carat weights.
Rubies do not weigh the same as diamonds, and emeralds do not weigh the same as either rubies or diamonds.
A 6.5mm diamond weighs 1 carat, a 6.5mm emerald weighs 8/10 carat, and a beautiful 6.5mm Moissanite weighs 9/10 carat.
But ask anyone to picture the size of a 1-carat emerald, diamond or Moissanite, and they will imagine exactly the same size for
each gem. The following image illustrates what we are saying here.
Unlike the carat that refers to the weight of a gemstone, the proportion of gold used in making fine jewelry is measured in terms of karats. The word karat comes from the carob seed, which was originally used to balance scales in ancient bazaars. Pure gold is designated 24 karat, which indicates the fineness of the gold or degree of dilution with added alloys.
| GOLD FINENESS |
Karats |
Fineness |
% Gold |
| 24 |
1000 |
100 |
| 22 |
916.7 |
91.67 |
| 18 |
750 |
75 |
| 14 |
583.3 |
58.3 |
| 10 |
416.7 |
41.67 |
| 9 |
375 |
37.5 |
The degree of gold fineness is defined as the number of parts per thousand comprised by pure gold, the
remaining parts being any of several alloy metals. In some areas of the world (India for example),
gold jewelry is considered an investment rather than an item for show and for this reason, consumers in India
always seek finer gold in the 18, 22 or if possible in 24K fineness. In markets such as the USA, where jewelry is
worn more for adornment and lifestyles are more active, such fineness (and softness) of gold is not desired or desirable.
Most jewelry in this market is offered in the 14K to 18K range and many less expensive pieces are made of 10K gold.
THE MANY SHADES OF GOLD
There are two aspects to the color of gold jewelry products. Some products are made and finished so that the natural color of the finished item is also the natural color of the material used. This is true of most karat gold fine jewelry. On the other hand, other products may be finished with a surface coating that has its own color that is different than the material used to make the product. Coatings can be applied by electroplating, vapor deposition, or other exotic techniques. Some processes used to color metal first create a colorless film on the parent base. This colorless film is then stained with a dye of the desired color. Aluminum, for example, is most commonly colored in this way. If a jewelry product made with a natural metal with natural color is
chopped up into little pieces, no new and different colors start appearing on the cut surfaces. Chopping a coated item into little pieces reveals the natural color of the parent material on the cut surfaces.
It is important to realize that the properties and characteristics of a coating determine how an item will perform as well as how it will appear. Coating systems are typically developed to be hard, abrasion resistant, and adherent to some parent material. However,
life is real and coatings will wear, flake, chip, and abrade to such an extent that the color of the parent material may start to appear.
Once a coating is compromised and the color of a base metal appears, people can get very disappointed. This is NOT what we want to
happen and is exactly why we do not manufacture or sell coated metal jewelry.
WE MANAGE THE KARATS
Our factories formulate, melt, and process all the karat gold alloys to yield all the different colors and compositions that are used in the products presented on this website. In this way, maximum control over karat fineness, color, performance in manufacturing operations, and consumer use is achieved. After we tell you a bit about how gold is given different fineness and shades of color, we will tell you also the dirty secret of how some vendors can offer to sell you what seem to be fine 14K gold items at impossible bargain basement prices
Karat gold alloys are formulated with silver, copper, and zinc to achieve colors ranging from red to pink, pale yellow to yellow and even to green. The reddish alloy colors are achieved by using very little silver in the alloy composition and yield what most people refer to as rose gold. Increasing silver concentrations shifts the alloy color more into the yellow range. Increasing the silver concentrations even more creates first green shades and, at maximum silver levels, white tones emerge. White gold alloys that use silver as a bleaching agent are old-fashioned and susceptible to tarnishing because of the high silver levels. We do not create our white gold this way.
In modern times, nickel-white alloys were developed and come in different shades depending on nickel concentration. Low levels of nickel allow yellow overtones to appear in the gold while high nickel concentrations are quite bright and white. Unfortunately, some high nickel karat gold can be very difficult to work with because of their high hardness and reduced ductility. Unless created with expertise, they are also susceptible to stress-corrosion cracking.
White gold alloys formulated with nickel are unacceptable in European markets. For situations such as this, we use white gold that is formulated with palladium, a member of the platinum family of metals. With palladium costing over $300 per ounce, these alloys are costly but have very high metal value and perform very well in jewelry applications.
Our factories use only gold, silver, copper, nickel, and zinc of the highest commercially available purity to formulate our alloys. All our process procedures are based on best metallurgical practices. Because of superior alloys and superior processes, we have been very successful in manufacturing white gold products with some of the highest nickel concentrations in use, thereby achieving uncommonly high levels of whiteness in finished products.
NOT ALL 14K GOLD IS CREATED EQUAL
Have you ever looked at two yellow gold rings identical in design and shape, and noticed one is a lustrous rich yellow color while the other is kind of pale yellow? Looking inside the shank of each you might see each is stamped “14K” so why should they look so different? From what we showed in our chart earlier, 14K means each ring is 58.3% pure gold and the other 41.7% is other metal alloy. Ahah! You might guess then that the difference in the color is because of the alloy metals mixed in each one and you are right. 58.3% of each ring is pure gold and identical but the other stuff mixed in is why they are different colors.
Now if you took those two same rings and put them on a jewelers gram scale to do a very fine weight measure, there is a good chance you would also find each ring weighs a slightly different amount. Again, if 58.3% of each is pure gold, it must be the other metal that is in the 41.7% alloy mix that is different in each ring. To make this situation even worse, it is possible one ring was made from re-melted gold jewelry and in the process of melting and recasting of the new ring, the gold alloy used was not quality controlled and retained microscopic air bubbles trapped inside the molten metal. With a magnifying glass (sadly sometimes even with the naked eye) you might also detect slight imperfections in the surface, little pockets or nicks where the gold did not flow perfectly and smoothly in the casting. Oh my, the proud 14K stamped inside each ring doesn’t begin to tell the story. How does one ever gain a measure of comfort in buying gold jewelry?
WE MANAGE THE QUALITY
As we said much earlier here, our factories formulate, melt, and process all the karat gold alloys to yield all the different colors and compositions that are used in the products presented on this website. In this way, maximum control over karat fineness, color, performance in manufacturing operations, and consumer use is achieved. But we need to tell you one further step we take that should give you some measure of comfort in the quality of gold you might buy from us.
We are one of the few jewelry manufacturing entities that purchases fine gold under controlled conditions for use in karat gold alloy formulation. Fine gold bars of .9999 purity are acquired from a short list of approved refiners. This pure 24K bullion is processed into the highest quality alloy mixtures that are formed into the jewelry you see on our website. We have total control over the quality of our gold and gold alloys and we never mix in gold purchased from other sources. In the rare situations where we do re-melt and reprocess gold into jewelry, it is our own jewelry that we melt, not that of someone else. Any alloys that are recycled are also reformulated at the same time. Reformulating involves "tweaking" the concentrations of all the alloying elements that are present in a particular alloy to initially specified concentrations to assure our alloys remain pure and our finished jewelry impeccable in quality and appearance. That is our assurance and our guarantee. Only our very best is offered for you our very best customer.
We are indebted to John C. McCloskey, esteemed friend and metallurgist par excellence, for his contribution to portions of the content contained herein. Mr. McCloskey is a practicing metallurgist with over 30 years of experience in the jewelry and precious metals processing industries. He was awarded Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Metallurgy by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to becoming involved with precious metals, he was employed in both the ferrous and non ferrous metals processing industries. He has written many technical papers on metals processing with particular emphasis on relationships between metals processing, the metal properties and characteristics which result, and the properties which are required for different applications.
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