Wednesday, December 16, 2015

How to check and tell if the gold is pure?


There are many people who buy jewelry in regular basis and in order to buy they prefer the seller from whom they are buying since a long time. At the time of buying jewelry, we usually check the shine, finish and design of the gold or other jewelry. There are many people who want to know how pure the material of the jewelry is. Here is a guide that will let you know how you can check the purity of gold at time of purchasing the jewelry.
  • Gold
When it comes to gold we say that gold is the most common material to make jewelry but it is quite expensive. The design and finish of jewelries adds more prices tags to it. The term karat is used in order to identify the purity of gold. 24 Karats is considered as the purest gold. When we see pure gold its appearance is shiny but it is soft and malleable with yellow color. Because of its softness and malleable nature, it is mixed with other metals in order to make it hard so that the jewelry made of that gold last for longer period of time. If any item is made from 24 Karat gold then it will bend very easily and after some bends it will break and this is the reason why buying pure gold jewelry is a bad idea. The gold which is normally used by the gold smith is the gold alloy which is a mixture of pure gold and with other metals and the other metals that are mixed is not gold.
  • Testing gold for purity
There are some methods which one can follow in order to check gold’s purity. Gold is usually marked with stamps which shows the karat of it, but if no mark is there you can check its purity.
  • Acid Testing
There are many jewelry stores that will allow you to check gold purity. They usually use nitric acid in order to check the karat. Recognition of caret is done as per the chemical reaction observed.

You can also opt for scratch test, you just have to scratch the piece of gold on the test stone and see whether it leaves the mark or not. The darker the mark is the higher the karat is. You can then put a drop of nitric acid in order to see the reaction.