German Silver. This is a triple alloy of copper, nickel, and zinc, and is sometimes called nickel silver. The best quality of it consists of four parts copper, two parts nickel, and two parts zinc, but this quality is the most difficult to work. For some purposes the proportion of copper is slightly increased, and for articles which are to be cast instead of stamped or hammered about 2 per cent. of lead is added. To make a good malleable alloy, the three metals of which it is composed should all be of the best quality. German silver has a tendency to crack in Annealing (q.v.), and is all the more liable to do this if its component metals are impure. Its crystalline structure is got rid of by hammering, rolling, and annealing. It is harder and tougher than brass, and takes a fine polish. In colour it is sufficiently near silver to make it valuable for plating with that metal. This, together with its hardness in resisting wear, has caused a great demand for German silver for certain wares made in Birmingham and Sheffield.
Spoons and forks of this alloy are made in immense numbers. Such articles as salvers, dish-covers, jugs, teapots, and the like are also largely made of it, but these objects, or at least some of them, are still more largely made of Britannia Metal (q.v.), a greatly inferior alloy, because much softer. German silver has a coppery odour, and is readily attacked by acid liquids, such as vinegar, which coat it with verdigris. Spoons and forks made of this alloy should therefore either be plated with silver or carefully kept clean.
Of late years, through care in preparing a suitable alloy, large objects, such as the bodies of jugs and coffee-pots, can be formed of sheet German silver by 'spinning' it on the lathe, instead of by stamping or by the slow process of hammering. Formerly it was only a soft alloy like Britannia metal that could be so treated. For some time past there has been a tendency to substitute for electroplate—i.e. German silver plated with real silver—white alloys having nickel for their basis. These, however, are but varieties of German silver known under different names, such as silveroid, argentoid, navoline, and nickeline. Some of them contain small quantities of tin, cadmium, and other metals. Mountings for ship-cabins, bar-fittings, and also forks and spoons have been manufactured on a considerable scale from these new alloys.