0 items
45, Greywell Shopping Centre
HAVANT
Hampshire
PO9 5AH
White Gold
White Gold is an alloy of Gold and at least one white metal, usually nickel or palladium. Like yellow gold, the purity of white gold is given in carats.
White Golds properties vary depending on the metals and proportions used. As a result, white gold alloys can be used for different purposes; while a nickel alloy is hard and strong, and therefore good for rings and pins; Gold-palladium alloys are soft, pliable and good for white Gold gemstone settings.
The highest quality white Gold is usually at least 18 carat, and made up of Gold and palladium, sometimes with other metals like copper, silver, and platinum for weight and durability, although this often requires specialized Goldsmiths.
Making white gold
Making white god is similar to mixing colours in paints. Adding a red metal (copper) will tend to make gold red and adding a white metal tends to make gold paler and eventually white. Thus, adding other metal alloys to gold, apart from copper, will tend to whiten the colour and so it is possible to make gold a white colour.
Whilst additions of any white metal to gold will tend to bleach its colour, in practice, nickel and palladium (and platinum) are strong 'bleachers' of gold, silver and zinc are moderate bleachers.
This has given rise, historically, to 2 basic classes of white gold - the Nickel white gold and the Palladium white gold.
The nickel white gold tends to have a colder white colour, whereas the palladium white gold has a warmer colour. Good nickel white tend to be hard and difficult to process. While palladium white tend to be soft, easy to process but is much more expensive, because of the high price of palladium.
Consequently, many commercial white alloys are thrifted in nickel or palladium and contain some copper; hence, the colour is compromised.
At the 8-10 carat (33.3 - 41.6% gold) level, Gold-silver alloys are quite white, ductile although soft and are used for jewellery purposes.
The gold hallmarks are the same for white gold.
SGB Gold buys white gold.
Ready to sell white gold to SGB Gold?
