Books on the various gold alloys?

[Lobby]

Folks, I've recently purchased Wise's book on the chemistry of various gold alloys, but it doesn't really address the properties and compositions of gold from a jeweler's perspective.

I see where some refiners sell gold in the various alloy formulations that jewelers desire.

My question is, do you know of a good source where I can read up on all these formulations?

Thanks!

 

[jimdoc]

Folks, I've recently purchased Wise's book on the chemistry of various gold alloys, but it doesn't really address the properties and compositions of gold from a jeweler's perspective.

I see where some refiners sell gold in the various alloy formulations that jewelers desire.

My question is, do you know of a good source where I can read up on all these formulations?

Thanks!

http://archive.org/details/goldsmithshandbo00geeg

http://archive.org/search.php?query=gold%20alloys

 

[Lobby]

Thanks. You've put me on the right track.

 

[nickvc]

The big problem is that many manufacturers produce their own alloys and different countries use different formulations, here in the UK 18 k white is a palladium alloy in the main whereas in the US it's a nickel alloy, domestically produced 9k has silver at around 10% but imported material can have none. Basically there are no set alloys unless all the material comes from the same source and even then it can vary whether it's a cast product which can contain silicon or a stamped product which will have none as it causes the metal to be brittle.

 

[Lobby]

I've noticed that.

Gold from Mexico is different than U.S. gold. It would be nice to have a comprehensive database of all these formulations.

 

[MMFJ]

Part of my job, many years ago, was as an homologation tech (checking our telephone system signaling against the local country regulations to make sure folks could make calls, etc.)

We followed "world standards", created by CCITT (now known as the ITU-T for Telecommunication Standardization Sector of the International Telecommunications Union) and checked our system well before sending it out to the various countries for 'type approval' certification.

However, it seemed that, no matter which country I visited (27 in all..), we always had to do some 'tweak' here/there, which often bordered on the very edge of the 'standard'.

That always confused me until, one day, while in the Czech Republic, one of the test engineers there made a statement I'll never forget.....

Standards are such a good thing, that everyone wants one of their own!

Well, I thought that appropriate to contribute here (even though it may not help the topic, it may bring a smile to your face {and perhaps a bit of clarity to this strange world} as much as it does to me each time I think of it!)

 

[Lobby]

:mrgreen: