Pink Gold

By Author: Robert Vayner
Total Articles: 113
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Pink Gold has become one of the hottest trends in jewelry lately. Isn't all gold, well, GOLD colored? No. Among other varieties there is black hills gold, green gold, purple gold, and, pink, or rose colored gold. All colored gold is based on gold-silver, or gold-copper alloys.

Gold, silver and copper all have the same crystal structure, and thus they are compatible with each other over a large range of compositions. Then there are some trace alloying additions that make a difference as well. Typical trace additions include zinc and silicon, and perhaps grain refiners such as iridium. Then you could use cobalt and nickel to strengthen any of these alloys. By adding up to 2% zinc you can improve the melt fluidity for such castings as the lost wax process, best known for casting large statues but just as good for creating small pieces of jewelry as well. If you're going to be stamping gold product from sheets you might risk going as high as 10% zinc.

Adding a little dab of silicon to any of these alloys usually results in a more complete filling in of your mold. This takes out all the little bubbles ...
... gives you a much better reproduction of the desired surface detail inherent in the mold

By adding low melting point metals such as zinc, tin, cadmium and indium you can achieve lower melting ranges and these are therefore great for making gold solders for fashion jewelry.

Gold is yellow and copper is red. Introducing red by increments to yellow will turn gold to pink. If you keep adding more you'll get red, or rose colored gold. Adding silver or zinc makes gold turn paler. The higher the gold content (24K versus 10K) the less room you have for adding color changing alloys. By the same token, the lower the gold content is the more color changing alloy metals that can be added, giving us a much wider range of colors than the higher carat gold. Made for the modern woman, a light touch of copper is what gives pink gold its rosy hue.

The heavier or more intricate your stone additions are, the tougher your gold must be to hold it in place. That's why fashion jewelry manufacturers, like Fashion Penny Dot com generally prefer to work from a base of 14K or 10K gold to create pink gold, since

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About the Author:

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Robert Vayner is CEO/Founder of FashionPenny.com, a purveyor of
fine http://www.fashionpenny.com/diamond.html wholesale pink gold
jewelry.