Good Jewellery Tips/Advice - Gold - White Gold

Traditionally diamond jewellery was set in silver or sterling since diamonds go best with white metals. Silver tarnishes, as it blackens when it mixes or comes into contact with oxygen in the air. Polished silver has a sheen and lustre, which is high but it requires constant polishing, maintenance and cleaning. Jewellers switched to Gold because it afforded them higher profits and better turnover since the price of gold is much higher than silver. Customers loved because the sheen and lustre of gold is constant. It never fades.

Pure Gold is usually referred to as 24k meaning 24 parts of only gold. Depending on its refining it is impossible to get 100% pure gold. The best refineries give .9999 or .999. The industry standard in India is .995 and is referred in India as standard gold. We at Attahagold use .999 for our own in house produced jewellery.

White Gold is usually at least18k, which means 24k or pure gold is melted and mixed with alloys in the proportion of 75% gold and 25% alloys for 18k gold. The alloys we use at Attahagold are only copper and silver. For white gold we use only palladium and silver. But it has been the practice to use cheaper metals to alloy gold with. These alloys range from cadmium, cobalt, iron, manganese, nickel and zinc. However these cheaper metals usually give skin rashes and cause irritation to the skin. Some countries have even banned the use of these metals in alloying gold.

Palladium is almost half the price of gold and if bought in smaller quantities may some times cost much more than half the price of gold in the retail market. Therefore white gold is usually more expensive than other alloyed or coloured gold. Even though it may be used as trace elements for the treatment of obesity its main use since 1974 has been in catalytic converters by the automobile industry. It is a silver-white ductile metal. It is also as a catalyst for hydrogen purification; in dentistry and by the electronics industry and has a much higher melting point than gold. Whereas gold melts at around 1064 degrees centigrade, palladium melts at about 1554 degrees centigrade which means more energy is consumed to melt palladium causing palladium based gold alloys to be much more expensive than other traditional non-palladium based gold alloys.

Palladium also dulls the gold and therefore white gold is usually plated with Rhodium. So when you are wearing white gold it is often only the Rhodium that you are seeing. So why buy an expensive metal for your jewellery if you are going to conceal it behind a veneer of coating? Makes no sense to me. I therefore advise my clients to always use sterling silver with rhodium plating for their jewellery sets in white metal. It is about 1/10th the cost and you cannot really tell the difference.

White gold has its own intrinsic beauty and sheen but that does not cater to those who like the gloss and sheen of Rhodium.

Attaha Gold - quality you can trust at affordable and competitive prices!