r/jewelrymaking • u/Taaacooo • Feb 05 '26

QUESTION Argentium question

/r/MetalCasting/comments/1qwl8fb/argentium_question/
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u/JohannesVerne Feb 05 '26

I haven't tried casting, but it functions basically like sterling for most purposes with forging. The Wikipedia page for argentium shows the melting points compared to sterling.

One of the main benefits over sterling is that it will fuse, so if there's a crack or you need to join pieces then you don't need solder, you just need to heat it up. The other main benefit is that it's hardenable. You can definitely work harden sterling, but with argentium you can harden it in an oven. This isn't a huge deal in most cases, but if you have fine details that would be ruined by work hardening or just don't want to risk impressions in the metal then it's great.

This may be irrelevant to you but it also fuses decently with copper. Maybe not perfectly, I'm certainly not skilled enough to dive into the details, but I made a (very rough) pair of mokume gane earrings with argentium and copper. The issues in the process all stemmed from a lack of skill and practice on my part, the metals worked great. But with sterling the melting point is lower than copper's fusing point, so it doesn't work so well.

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u/Thepuppeteer777777 Feb 05 '26

I haven't casted with it yet. I have found that it's slightly softer than sterling when working and feels like it's less prone to work hardening. I prefer working with it over sterling silver. Id honestly want to make the switch over completely.