GrizzlyBear -> RE: Metal Collar issues (12/1/2005 2:52:21 PM)
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: stef quote:
ORIGINAL: GrizzlyBear She will probably require gold of 18k or higher. I suspect the gold on the Eternity Collar is not pure, or is too thin. As the OP stated already, Eternity uses 24 karat (99.8% pure) gold for plating and they use a triple plating process. I'm guessing the gold quality and/or thickness is not the problem. I'm still curious what their mystery alloy additive is. If they're using any nickel to harden the plating, even a tiny amount can cause a reaction in some people. quote:
Here is one place that makes jewelry quality collars. You could try one of their rings first, to be sure she can wear it. They also do custom work in platinum, which is non-allergenic but very expensive. Pure platinum is 'hypo-allergenic' but the platinum used for jewelry making is not pure. It has somewhere in the neighborhood of 5% of copper, tungsten, palladuim, cobalt, iridium, ruthenium or some combination of these. By comparison, 24 karat gold is more pure and less likely to cause an allergic reaction. ~stef quote:
(in reply to stef) We already know that she reacted to the gold in the Eternity collar; 24K or not, it is contaminated with something she is allergic to. Nickel is the most common culprit. Triple plating is generally a reference to a three-layer process, in which steel is first plated with copper, then nickel, and finally a top layer of the desired finish. I suspect that the final gold layer is contaminated with nickel. 18K jewelry gold is usually an alloy of gold, silver, and copper, and generally contains no nickel. She is able to wear gold body jewelry without reaction; this would be one direction to look. I suggested platinum because it was the solution my mother found, for her wedding rings and earrings, when she was unable to wear 18K gold without a reaction. No idea what the alloy was, but I'm pretty sure it was whatever is normally used for platinum jewelry. I like the titanium idea best myself, and I found this site that makes titanium collars: http://www.english.axsmar.com/ They also make titanium rings, so that would make for a fairly inexpensive test.
|
|
|
|