Types of Sheet Metal to Use for Making Jewelry

Bronze Sheet Metal

• Bronze sheet metal is also known as Merlin's Gold. It seen in a rich dark gold-like color, created in part by a high copper content. This copper content also makes bronze sheet metal more mailable in the shaping and bending of jewelry pieces. Like all precious sheet metal, it comes in three standard thicknesses, or gauges. 24- and 30-gauge is thick, or medium thick, and used for jewelry like earrings, while 36-gauge is a thin foil for embossing and crafts.

Yellow Brass Sheet Metal

• Yellow brass sheet metal has a light gold-like color. It is much more reflective than bronze, and used to trick the eye into seeing gold. In fact; the color of yellow-bronze sheet metal has an almost identical appearance as high karat gold. Its disadvantage to bronze sheet metal is a low copper content, which means it is much less malleable.

Nickel Silver Sheet Metal

• Nickel silver sheet metal is often an alloy of nickel with copper and zinc. It is made to look like silver, and is referred to as German Silver. There is no silver in it, but it is identical in appearance. It also has the advantage of less tarnishing, and its stiffness makes shapes hold better. It has a history of hundreds of years in jewelry-making for these reasons.

Copper Sheet Metal

• Copper sheet metal is also a preferred sheet metal for jewelers to work with because of an attribute to bend easily, even in the cold. Thin gauge is used for soldering, stamping and brazing, and can even be shaped by hand. Another advantage is its resistance to tarnish in weather and environmental conditions.

Gold Sheet

• Gold sheet is extremely expensive to use, and often found as thin sheets called metallic leaf. Precious metals like gold, silver and platinum are rolled into metallic leaf and molded to surfaces. Rolled gold is also another kind of gold sheet metal. It is thin and laminated over a less-valuable metal like brass. Both layers are fused together. This has the advantage of a jewelry piece becoming stronger and more durable to denting and the environment, than stand-alone gold.