Jewellery : Palladium for Jewellery -- Turns Yellow Gold White
By Gary Hocking
Palladium is an exciting metal to use in jewellery making. It is a soft silver-white metal which is actually whiter than platinum. Gold and palladium are totally soluble in one another. When it is mixed or alloyed with yellow gold it turns the gold into what we know as white gold.
We used to use nickel to alloy with yellow gold to make white gold but nickel is highly toxic. Palladium is more expensive than gold and it costs more to alloy it with gold than nickel but it turns gold into a harder and stronger metal as well as being white. That’s why white gold costs more than yellow gold jewellery.
Palladium, discovered in 1803 by William Wollaston and named after the asteroid Pallas, has been used since 1939 for jewellery making as a replacement for platinum.
So palladium is not just used as an alloy with gold to make white gold but is a metal used by itself for making white jewellery. It has several advantages over white gold or platinum.
First of all it is lighter. 44% lighter than platinum and 38 % lighter than gold. That’s important because it allows you to make a larger, bulkier piece of jewellery and it is still not too heavy to wear. But on the positive side it is not as light as titanium or alluminium so you still have the comfort and feel that you are wearing your jewellery.
Secondly, being harder and tougher than gold it doesn’t need as much polishing and maintenance. Thirdly it is cheaper than the other two metals so the manufacturer can make more jewellery for less cost and you benefit there as well as a consumer.
Consider that if you want a white metal piece of jewellery at the high end you have three alternatives: Platinum, white gold and palladium. What you want ideally is a hard, tough metal which has a high lustre when polished and is the cheapest.
Palladium is harder than gold, does not need to be rhodium plated like white gold, has a high lustre like Platinum, is lighter in weight and when Platinum is $600 an ounce and gold is $400 then palladium comes in at a fantastic $200! No contest for me
Gary Hocking makes custom jewellery specializing in Australian opals. He has his own website http://www.jewelleryexpress.com.au Feel free to use this article as long as you keep the bio and the live link to his website.
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