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Asian Gold Darker

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blingless

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I recently purchased some items in 14K gold from India. The Gold was a much darker color. I''ve tried searching the net and looked through the forum archives but all the references I''ve found point to 18K or 22K gold. Does anyone really know what makes this gold a different color when its sold as equal to 14K? Thanks......
 

JulieN

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mm, never seen 14K indian gold

14K is very little gold, it''s half by weight, not volume. So all the other stuff which it is alloyed with will make different colors.
 

AGBF

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Date: 2/18/2007 2:25:05 AM
Author: JulieN
14K is very little gold, it''s half by weight, not volume. So all the other stuff which it is alloyed with will make different colors.

What JulieN says makes sense. The 14K only tells us how much gold is in the gold alloy, not what else is in it. The particular gold piece you saw (or own) may be alloyed with a metal that gives the piece a darker color than most 14K gold in the US. I am sure one of our goldsmiths could tell us which metals are the most likely candidates for creating a 24K look. I am sure that that would be the goal of anyone selling 14K gold in Asia!

Deb
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strmrdr

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There are thousands of different mixes in 14k gold.
14k dark yellow is one of my favorite 14k alloys but it isnt used much in the US.
18k dark yellow is the same color as 24k gold.
From other sources its also called deep yellow.

My guess is that it has more copper than silver in the mix to darken it up.
 

blingless

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Thank you, the link to the page on alloys indicates that there are 14K alloys that are dark or rich gold but didn''t describe content. My guess would be that since articles on the topic indicate that the Asian market looks down on anything less than 18K to 22K these were made as low end knock-offs for the Asian equiv. of a dept. store or something like that. Or perhaps made specifically for export. I''m guessing whatever they were alloyed with would be safe to wear. I really am becoming a fan of the darker gold....

Thanks again
 

innerkitten

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I bet it was for export. I was in India years ago and many of the pretty items for sale there are also for sale here. By the way you pay very little for the labor and mostly for the weight of the gold so the prices are very cheap. India is a great place to shop for jewelry if you happen to be there. Bali too.
 

WinkHPD

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I can not give you a good answer on what was used, but I can ask my bench on Tuesdaay if there has not been a good answer yet. More copper and less nickle would be one obvious answer but probably not the full or possibly even the correct one. (I have no expertise in this area.)

Richard Homer has a ring that he made or had made early in his career with blue gold, he said it is very hard to work with as the alloy makes the gold brittle, so he sandwiched it in between two pieces of rose gold between two layers of yellow gold for an incredibly interesting look.

You really can get an incredible variety of colors by using different alloys, I am surprised we don''t do more of it as part of the design process.

Wink
 

blingless

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Thanks Storm, great piece. I''ve worked a lot with steel, nickel, and tool steel alloys and I was surprised to see that quenching actually reduced hardness vs aging. I''ve hardened most tool steels (drill rod for example) by heating quenching in oil and then tempering so it won''t be so brittle. The process seems to have the opposite effect on gold alloys. I haven''t worked much with soft metals like copper or zinc so I''m not familiar with their properties. I would have guessed that heating would have had more of an annealing effect, spreading the molecules. I''ve done this with Aluminum to soften. Could I assume from that then the casting process itself results in hardening the gold?

If I ever went to a place like India the boat would probably sink from all the gold and diamonds I''d have to take back. I just have so little control around glitter and sparkle. Thank goodness my wife is more normal :)
 

blingless

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Thank you Wink and thank you for your webinars. I''m watching for the evening replay of diamond history. I really appreciate you taking the time to do that for us. I get home late from work so I can''t actually see any of them if they run before 7:00pm or so ET. But I think its great of you to take time to do that and want to say so.
 

AGBF

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Thanks Wink and Storm...and also blingless for starting this discussion! Now I have to go follow up on the links Storm posted. I agree with Wink that a lot more could be done with gold color in the design of jewelry :). I would like to see different shades of yellow gold used in the same piece.

Deb
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elmo

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Wouldn''t the simplest explanation be that it had been electroplated?
 

strmrdr

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Date: 2/18/2007 7:58:30 PM
Author: elmo
Wouldn''t the simplest explanation be that it had been electroplated?
That is done also so there is a chance that was done.
but its not the only option.
 

bujiatang

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Content from casting grain from Stuller is as follows
14k Bright Yellow
29% Copper 8% Silver 4.5% Zinc
14k Rich Yellow
28% copper 9.8 % silver 3.8% zinc
14k Euro yellow
22.7% copper 11.4 % silver 3.8% zinc

there are thousands of alloys, these are three of them.
 

AGBF

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Date: 2/24/2007 9:32:39 PM
Author: bujiatang
Content from casting grain from Stuller is as follows

14k Bright Yellow

29% Copper 8% Silver 4.5% Zinc

14k Rich Yellow

28% copper 9.8 % silver 3.8% zinc

14k Euro yellow

22.7% copper 11.4 % silver 3.8% zinc


there are thousands of alloys, these are three of them.


bujiatang,

These formulas are very interesting. Thank you for posting them.
Have you been lurking?

Deborah
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movie zombie

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would love to see these side by side.....

movie zombie
 

poptart

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What''s the difference between Rich Yellow and Dark/Deep Yellow? Or are they the same with tons of different names? Does anyone have a picture? This is all very interesting!

*M*
 

AGBF

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Poptart, you have hit on a good point. We are a market ready for exploitation: lovers of high karat yellow gold. One need not get into different colors of gold (although that is, of course, desirable) to meet our needs. We are fascinated even-or is it especially?-by alloys of yellow!

Deb
 

strmrdr

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There are no standards for colors/names once you get outside the mainstream mixes and even they vary.
 

bujiatang

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if you crunch the numbers even those alloys don''t add up quite right, and it is becasue of variation in the alloy. the FTC requires that gold be within .5k of the stamping, which allows for human error and differences. Imagine mixing cake batter at 1550 degrees. While you can be really consistent, it is never "perfect."

There are options though, and a good dark yellow is available. The question is are you going to be able to communicate your preferences to a jeweler without upsetting them. It would be like retaining a lawyer and telling them to change their stationary becasue it throws off the color scheme of your filing system, the request will have its toes on the line of being tangential.
 
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