Testing gold for karat contentYou’re now ready for testing gold and confirming what you think is real gold, and for that you will need to invest in either an electronic tester or an acid gold test kit. Unless you’re a serious gold finder/buyer/seller, it isn’t necessary to invest in an electronic tester to the tune of $200.00. I’ve been testing gold with an acid test kit for many years and find it accurate and reliable. An acid test kit costs approximately $25.00 and consists of a scratch stone, test needles and karat acids. Karat acids come in 10kt, 14kt, 18kt and 22kt. You can also purchase silver and platinum test acids (NOTE: You are working with real acid, so please use extreme caution and store it in a safe place after each use). Typing in "gold test kit," or "acid test kit" will bring up many results.
You test a piece of jewelry by first rubbing it several times on the scratch stone to make a good strong mark. In the picture below, you can see the mark the ring made on the stone.
You then rub one of the needles on the stone next to your test piece mark. Place a drop of acid solution with the nearest karat rating you believe your piece to be on both marks you’ve made. If the test marks dissolve, make another set of marks using a lower karat solution. If they dissolve using 10kt acid, the item is probably just costume and not fine jewelry. The needles are used to compare the color and strength of the jewelry mark to the needle mark, but they aren’t really necessary and I rarely use them. After a minute or two, the mark the ring made on the stone held strong beneath the acid, confirming the ring is 14kt.
The locket looked good, but both the 10kt and 14kt acids "ate" the mark.
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