Precious metals in jewelry manufacturing and their best use

Pure gold and platinum are soft metals which are extremely dense. pure gold is about two and half times heavier than iron and pure platinum is just under three times. While really bright in color pure metals are not suitable for fine jewelry because of their softness. Soft metals are easy to damage, difficult to polish, and unsuitable for detailed work. This is why they are mixed (alloyed) with other metals, in order to give them the desired properties. This is also where all this “carats” and confusing numbers come into play. In fact it is pretty simple:

All pure metals in nature are white or gray in color except two, gold – bright yellow and copper- reddish pink. Now we go back to precious metals. You can find more here; Precious metals services

All different colors of precious metals are achieved by mixing these colored metals with white ones.

Carat is a confusing name for purity or fineness of precious metals. It is confusing because the same word is used as a weight measurement for precious stones. That carat is equal to 0.2gr. and have nothing to do with metal fineness.