Klarinet Archive - Posting 000780.txt from 1999/08

From: Roger Shilcock <roger.shilcock@-----.uk>
Subj: Re: [kl] RE:German silver
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 12:29:34 -0400

Lelia et al.,
I didn't look at Buffet's metal specs., actually - I think some previous
contributors may have, though.
The remark about the high copper content in their keywork was based on
what various repair persons and others have said about what is
brought to light when the silver plating wears off or gets damaged.
Incidentally, talking about cheapish white metal things, there was also an
alloy called Britannia metal, mostly tin plus a bit of antimony. This
stayed nice and shiny and looked a bit like bright pewter, but was cheaper
and lighter.
It was used a lot for teapots, especially in cafes - before stainless
steel got cheap enough to use.
Yours,
Roger Shilcock

On Thu, 26 Aug 1999 LeliaLoban@-----.com
wrote:

> Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 09:38:15 EDT
> From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
> Reply-To: klarinet@-----.org
> To: klarinet@-----.org
> Subject: [kl] RE:German silver
>
>
> Thanks to Richard Bush Roger Shilcock and Ann Bell for the technical
> definitions of German silver. It's no wonder there's a lot of confusion
> among clarinetists, because tradespeople use the term sloppily. I've noticed
> in my flea marketing that jewelry dealers, especially, have spread
> misinformation so far and wide that it's a wonder the errors haven't sneaked
> into the dictionaries under "secondary definitions" (yet...give 'em time).
> Low-end jewelry dealers will call almost any silvery-looking metal "German
> silver." It sounds much more desirable than, "pot-metal."
>
> The main source of trouble, I think, has nothing to do with clarinets. Much
> of the mess dates back to the publicity, about two decades ago, around the
> fact that true pewter contains a lot of lead (sometimes 40-50% lead or even
> more). Customers began to notice and avoid handling pewter products such as
> old jewelry and tableware, out of fear of lead poisoning. To make matters
> worse, quite a lot of the cheapest pewter costume jewelry, toy soldiers and
> tableware was marketed for kids, in the 1880s through 1930s. Suddenly that
> old *cheap* Depression-era pewter (I'm not talking about the scarce,
> high-quality goods that collectors seek; I'm talking about the common,
> low-end products more likely to turn up in an average job-lot at an estate
> auction) became impossible to sell unless dealers called it something else.
> They understood that buyers realized "German silver" wasn't real silver and
> might contain "some" lead, so they'd sneak in something that's up to half
> lead under the "German silver"definition with the rationalization (which I've
> actually heard articulated by dealers; I'm not guessing about this) that they
> weren't *really* engaging in false advertising because they weren't claiming
> the stuff was real silver. (Try to tell that to some mom who gave a piece of
> this so- called "German silver" jewelry, really high-lead pewter, to her
> grade school kid, who handles it constantly....) Well, right now, there's a
> growing market for collecting old pewter, to the point where much of the
> non-antique pewter that dealers considered get-rid-of-it-quick junk 20 years
> ago is now marketable as "vintage" stuff. So now we've also got gen-u-wine
> German silver getting mislabelled as pewter!
>
> Unfortunately, the sloppy definitions have filtered through the bottom of the
> marketplace to the point where IMHO, the majority of flea market or
> "junktiques" dealers don't know (or care about) how to tell the difference
> between the various types of silvery-colored non-silver (or not-much- silver)
> metals. What convinces me we're dealing with honest, widespread confusion
> today, instead of the probably-deliberate misleading labels of yesterday, is
> that I frequently see *marked* Mexican silver or coin silver -- both closer
> to pure silver than Sterling silver -- mislabelled as the far less valuable
> "German silver," sometimes priced accordingly and sometimes not!
>
> My guess is that very few clarinet dealers and repair technicians ever go to
> the trouble of researching metals as Richard Bush and Ann Bell have done.
> The manufacturer's specifications, such as the Buffet specifications
> consulted by Roger Shilcock, include more reliable information than we can
> get from the average store employee.
>
> Lelia
>
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