What is Sterling Silver?

A lot of people have no idea what sterling silver is. Many times I have had customers ask me if sterling is solid silver or is it plated. The answer is pretty simple: sterling silver is any alloy of pure silver which is at least 925 parts per thousand of pure silver. Traditional sterling is compsed of pure silver and a bit of copper. The copper is added to the pure metal to halp make the products made of sterling to be stronger and less subject to wear. Pure silver is relatively soft and stays that way. For instance a spoon made of pure silver would be the wrong thing to eat hard ice cream with as it it would bend like crazy. With the copper addedto the material the spoon, while still somewhat soft, compared to steel, would be a whole lot stiffer than the pure silver version.

The sterling alloy is the same color throughout as the added copper mixes with the silver and is not visible once alloyed. The copper does show up on the surface of sterling, however, if the alloy is heated and the copper combines with oxygen in the atmosphere to form a layer of copper oxide. This oxide appears as a dirty, brownish smudge on the surface of sterling pieces as they are worked and heated either to anneal them orto solder them. Metalsmiths call this discoloration "Fire Scale" and it is the bane of silversmiths everywhere as it cannot be easily removed but must be either polished off with abrasives or plated over with a thin layers of pure silver. The latter was used laregly by sterling manufacturers in order to save polishing time in the silver shop.

Enough on this subject for now. More "lore" on a later post.