Three Types of Ring Metals and What You Should Know
Selecting the perfect ring can feel like a daunting task. While there are a lot of components to consider, one of the biggest is choosing the ring metal that's right for you and your lifestyle. Today, we sit down with John and Jack Barbera, the brothers and owners of JB Jewelers in Hartville, OH to explore different types of ring metals.
Gold
Gold is the most popular choice for wedding and engagement rings—and for many reasons. From white gold to yellow to rose gold, this metal provides you with many options and is extremely flexible when it comes to resizing and repairing throughout the duration of the rings life.
Gold has held the hearts of humans for as long as we discovered it, but the higher the purity (or karat) is not always a good thing with gold. "You'll rarely see a jeweler sell a ring in anything greater than 18-karat gold, and if they do - it's to someone who probably will very rarely wear that ring," Jack said. "Gold that pure is just too easy to damage for it to be practical in a ring."
Platinum
“Platinum is extremely difficult to cast and work with because it’s one of the worlds strongest precious metals,” said John Barbera, “you really have to take your time with it and make sure that you’re temperatures are exactly right to work with it.”
Although being strong makes this metal a pain to work with, the end results can be absolutely gorgeous. Since the metal is so resistant to blemish, you’ll rarely find someone wearing a platinum ring with many scratches on it. They also tend to retain their shine extremely well, and are easily polished if they do happen to get damaged.
Sterling Silver
Can you believe that there was a time in history when silver was valued more than gold? Silver is one of the longest-standing metals in the jewelry industry. Although once thought to be the most valuable precious metal, it’s currently one of the most affordable precious metals in today’s market. As an extremely malleable precious metal, people also run into problems when they wear jewelry of silver that is too pure. It is often mixed with other metals (mostly copper) to create a substance known as “sterling silver,” which is a much better alternative to pure metal.
Silver does come with a few downsides though, especially on the cleaning side. Mixing silver with copper helps its stability as a metal a little bit but, according to John “with silver you’ll need to plan on getting the ring polished and cleaned annually if you really want to keep that shine.