Page 4  Suggestions for Working with Sterling Silver Jewelry Wire

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When is the best time to take measures to minimize tarnish in your jewelry?  The answer is simple, when you are making the jewelry.  What can you do?  Again the answer is again relatively simple, you need to do something to prevent the chemicals in the atmosphere and in our skin from contacting the copper and silver atoms in the sterling silver wire.  How do we to that?  Currently there are two basic ways.  The first way is to purchase wire that has a coating that prevents the atmosphere from contacting your wire.  At present there are very few options for this in sterling silver, but we do have an option in silver-plated wire.  The Artistic Wire Natural Silver, silver-plated wire has an enamel coating on the wire to minimize tarnish.  This clear coating prevents any external chemicals from contacting the wire as long as the coating is maintained (not scraped off).  Jewelry made with this wire will resist tarnishing for a very long time, but the enamel coating on the wire is vulnerable to exposure to ultra-violet light and will turn slightly yellow after many years of exposure.  This is a very good solution, but not a perfect one.
 

Anti-Tarnish Wire
Anti-Tarnish Silver-Plated Wire
The second thing that one can do to minimize tarnish is also simple.  Before using your sterling silver wire to make a jewelry item, polish the wire with an anti-tarnish polishing cloth.  Polishing first, places the anti-tarnish coating over the entire surface of the wire and not on just the outer surfaces of your finished piece.  This is a very simple but very effective approach.  Coat your sterling silver wire with the anti-tarnish wax-like coating from the polishing cloth before you begin bending it into shape for use as jewelry. 

Jewelry that is tarnished can be cleaned and shined by soaking it in chemical baths.  These baths are very effective ways for removing tarnish, but is should also be noted that they can also remove the microscopic bits of silver or copper that reacted with the chemicals in the air to product the tarnish.  Over an extended period of time the surface of the sterling silver can actually become visibly pitted as some of the copper is removed.  Here is a web page that describes how to use aluminum foil, hot water and baking soda to make a chemical bath to remove tarnish from silver:

http://educ.queensu.ca/~science/main/concept/chem/c03/C03DEEA1.htm

The ultimate and best solution for this problem is now available.  It is a new sterling silver alloy called Argentium sterling silver.  This wire is a patented alloy consisting of 92.5% silver, about 5.9% copper and 1.6% germanium.  The tarnish resistance of this silver alloy stems from the fact that germanium combines with elements in the air to form a clear compound that coats the wire.  This germanium compound prevents the sulfur compounds in air pollution from coming in contact with the silver or the copper in the wire and for this reason prevents the formation of the dark tarnish that results from contact with sulfur compounds.  When this new Argentium sterling wire does tarnish, the tarnish is a light yellow in color and can easily be removed with a soft cloth and soap and water.  Furthermore, this new sterling silver alloy can be soldered and heated just like "old" sterling silver.  We really believe that this new alloy of silver is going to take over the jewelry markets.  Within the next five years, our opinion is that the market for "old" sterling silver will slowly dry up as it is replaced by this new Argentium sterling silver.  Wire using this new sterling silver alloy is now available in our WigJig Internet store.  We call it Anti-Tarnish SS. 

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