One of the great things about shopping with Chain Me Up is that nearly all of the jewellery can be customised to your own style. All of the solid gold necklaces in our store are available in all the colours of gold. Whether you love rose gold, yellow gold or white gold the most it’s all yours to choose, and we make it to your length as well. The same is true of our complete range of over 4600 hand cast precious metal charms, each one is available in your choice of coloured gold, with your choice of fitting. You can even select earring hooks and wear our gold charms as earrings! We hope the video helps you to better understand the differences between the shades of gold and what the terms ‘plated’, ‘filled’ and ‘vermeil’ mean.
I’m here with Mark Nelson and we’ve been talking about colour and Mark, you’re going to show us some important things about different colours with gold. That’s right, gold can come in a wide array of colours in different forms. So I want to kind of talk with you a little bit about alloyed gold, plated gold particularly and what also what they call gold filled. So let’s get started. We’re going to start with what they call an alloy which is pure gold mixed with other metals like silver, copper or maybe zinc in order to obtain strength or a difference of colour. When we’re looking here, this is actually 22 karat gold, so it’s very rich in yellow, it’s mostly gold, there’s very little silver in it. It’s still an alloy, but there’s very little other material. Right, it’s mostly gold. Right next to that we have a yellow 18 karat, so we have a little less gold, little paler yellow in colour but still quite beautiful and has a nice rich colour. Next to that is the same thing in white gold. Same amount of gold but by adding, say more silver or nickel or something else we’ve actually turned it into a white metal. Oh, so by adding the other metals into that alloy, that’s what changes the colour. That’s what changes the colour, same amount of gold. Unless we go down to like maybe 14 and now we have a little but less gold and more of the other metals like silver, zinc, copper and things like that. There again it comes in yellow and it also comes in white gold as well. There again, same amount of gold, no difference but just different types of metal on the other end. I think a lot of people probably don’t realise that it’s the same amount of gold but the other materials are what changes the colour. Exactly, if we look at this tray over here you can see a wide range of different colours. There’s rose gold which means there’s a lot of copper in the alloy. Every one of those squares has the same exact amount of gold, just different amounts of the others. Wow, so you can just see a different range of colours here that are available within the same range of gold. It has the same properties. Just changes the colour. Sometimes there’s a difference in the workability, but mostly it’s colour. You have green, yellow, red, so primarily it’s a design choice. It really is. There’s other types of gold too and if you look on the board, we can see it right here, is gold filled. This is a layer of say, 14 karat that’s been bonded to a base metal. I’ll explain more of that in just a sec. Next to that is what they call Vermeil, now to be called Vermeil there’s a plating process of 22 karat gold or 14 or whatever. But it has to be a certain thickness on sterling. It always has to be on sterling right? Right. Some items are plated onto base metals, sometimes, but for it to be called Vermeil, it has to be on sterling. And then right next to that we have some basic plated items, and these can be plated, like you said, onto anything base metal, mostly brass, They can range from a little bit like a heavy plate to a thinner plate. Can you talk a little bit here about people who have allergies and where that comes into play with making these choices? That’s a great question, especially with the white gold. In order to get that white colour, sometimes what they’ll do is add nickel. A lot of people have nickel allergies and it would cause a rash. So that’s something to look out for if you prefer the look of white gold. You just need to watch out if you have that. Ask for an alloy made with palladium. It’s in the platinum group of metals and it’s hypoallergenic and much better for allergies. As far as when you’re creating jewellery and you’re using some of these different shades of gold you want to keep in mind to maintain the quality of the piece and use the same. If you were to go let’s say with the 22 karat piece, don’t add a plated item on to that, because it would de-value your work. You want to keep it at the same level by using the same all the way through. Step us through the plating here. If you look on this little chart here we can go through the different types of metals that are available. We have a gold bonded metal, which is a high karat gold layer, like 22 karat that’s bonded to Argentium. It’s a very thick sheet of metal and has a long wearability. So that’s making gold stronger because it’s the soft metal. Exactly, it’s the silver giving it some strength in that way. Then below that you’re going to have some gold filled. Gold filled can be 14 karat, 10 karat, 12 karat and both of these are notated by weight. You’ll have 1/6th the weight, 1/20th the weight. What does that mean? That means 1/6, let’s look at the bonded metal, 1/6th of the weight is going to be gold, of the total weight. If you go with gold filled, typically it’s around 20, so 1/20th of the total weight is going to be gold. OK, and why is that important? That’s so when you sell it the customer knows exactly how much they’re getting in the value of it. So it’s important to be clear with your customers if you’re selling your jewellery. Also as a buyer I like to know. What about the plating there? Plating, well let’s start with gold plated which is the thinnest, it’s about 2 millionths of an inch thick. It’s very thin. Followed by heavy plating which is 40 millionths of an inch thick and then Vermeil has to be 100 millionths of an inch thick. That’s a legal definition. It has to be at least that thick on sterling to be called Vermeil. I love the look of Vermeil personally. I do too, I love the rich yellow colour. Really pretty. So these are some of the different ways you can use the tones of gold and this was really educational. I hope so, thank you. Video Credit – Rio Grande
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