Pure gold is soft and very malleable.The carat gold alloys range in gold content from 8 to 22 carats (33.3% - 91.6% gold).
Metallurgists must take into consideration how various precious metals react to one another. Formulating gold alloys is very challenging. Too much of one precious metal can cause the combination to become fragile, hard and will prove difficult to design jewellery. Another combination of precious metal may cause the alloy to become too soft for jewellery fabrication.
The goal is to produce the best combination that provides the most acceptable gold alloy properties: strength, sturdiness, durability and visibly pleasing.
Best Gold Alloy Combinations
The most common alloying metals for jewelry are:
- Silver (Ag)
- Copper (Cu)
- Zinc (Zn)
However, other metals can be added to influence the properties of gold alloys.
All gold alloy have different mechanical properties such as strength, hardness and malleability (ductility) and some alloys can be heat treated to maximise strength and hardness. There are gold alloys that are optimised for different manufacturing routes such as lost wax (investment) casting and stamping.
Compositions of Some Common Gold Alloys
As much of the experimentation with gold alloys is now centred around colour, it is difficult to separate an article on gold alloy from information about colour. If it is an article on gold colours that you were looking for then: