You may have eaten salad all week, but what do you know about Karats?

One of the main ingredients in delightfully delicious jewelry is precious gold. Just as you keep count of calories, you need to be aware of your Gold Karats. Karat (abbreviated at Kt or K) refers to the percentage of pure gold contained in a piece of jewelry.

24KT is pure gold (100%), but you will rarely see it used in jewelry because it is too soft to be durable. Just as a healthy salad combines many veggies, pure gold is mixed or “alloyed” with other metals such as silver, copper, zinc or nickel to create a healthy metal which is strong , durable and beautiful.

Pure gold is a rich glorious yellow color. When it is alloyed with other metals, the color varies. Basically, the higher the Karat percentage, the softer and yellower the metal. A myriad of colors can be created as the gold is combined with different elements. White gold is created by adding palladium or nickel alloy, copper and zinc. Pink or red gold is created when gold is combined with copper. Green gold is a mixture of yellow gold, silver, copper and zinc.

Here are the basics you need to know to count your Karats:

24 Kt, 100% Pure Gold
18 Kt, 75% Pure Gold - European jewelry stamped 750
14 Kt, 58.5% Pure Gold - European jewelry stamped 585
10 Kt, 41.7% Pure Gold - European jewelry stamped 417

Tags: 10 Kt, 100% Pure Gold, 14k, 14KT, 18K, 18KT, 24k, 24kt, alloy, copper, green gold, jewelry, karat, metal, nickel alloy, palladium, pink gold, red gold, silver, white gold, Women of Style, yellow gold, zinc

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 30th, 2008 at 11:29 am and is filed under Precious Metals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.