How to use a gold acid test kit.

Don’t let your mystery gold be mystery gold forever.

Maybe you inherited some jewelry from a family member, or you picked up a gold jewelry treasure at an antique mall, and you want to be sure that you got the gold you paid for. Get yourself an acid test kit and go to work!

What you’ll need to start testing your gold with an acid testing kit

• Acid test kit – lots of places carry good ones and the end of this post has place you can order from.

• For today’s demo, just the 18 karat, 14 karat and 10 karat will be used.

• If you plan to test for other metals in the future, get the test kits that include more karats of gold as well as the silver and platinum.

• A test stone for creating the scratch test (it is usually included in a kit, but double check when ordering)

• Baking soda – to neutralize acid after

• Pieces of jewelry to test

• Possibly a file and a pair of tweezers (if you are testing something you suspect is plated or fill)

• Highly recommended – a pair of disposable gloves. I once got a bit of the acid on my fingers and they were stained and irritated for a week. I learned my lesson about safety when using an acid test kit, and now you can learn from my mistake.

Preparing to drop acid…for your acid test

If you’ve already used your test stone for past tests, or if you bought a used acid test kit, make sure that there are no remaining gold streaks on it. Those remaining streaks of gold on your gold testing stone can create a false positive or negative, so clean it thoroughly.

After cleaning, take your gold jewelry and rub it firmly on the stone back and forth to leave gold streaks. Do this in 2-3 different places on the stone depending on which karat of gold you are testing for.

What to know about testing your gold before you get started

If the karat of your gold jewelry is lower than what you are testing, these gold scratch lines line will disappear, which is why in some cases you should test for more than one kind of gold. In other words, 14 karat will appear as 10 karat if the only karat you test for is 10 karat gold.

My assumption is that this ring is 14 karat gold, but I will test for both 18 karat and 10 karat gold too.

SAFETY REMINDER – avoid touching the acid to your skin. Gloves are not the worst idea in this case as this acid is an irritant and will also stain your fingers for days (ask me how I know). And open a window or use good ventilation while also keeping the baking soda nearby.

Start by adding a drop of acid from the 18 karat tester bottle to the first streak of gold on the testing stone.

Underneath the acid, notice how the gold line disappears right away. This is the clearest indication that this is not 18 karat gold.

Next, add a drop from the 14 karat tester bottle to the middle streak. Now the gold lines are still clear underneath the acid drop, meaning it is 14 karat gold.

Now just for funsies, let’s see how the 10 karat tester reacts to testing the gold.

And here is why I suggest testing for more than one gold. The 10 karat tester also still shows the gold lines underneath. Had I only tested using the 10 karat acid, I might have wrongly assumed that the gold was 10 karat gold. Testing all three alloys of gold gave me the most accurate result.

Won’t this mark up my ring?

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Yes, but in a way that you should be able to easily polish it out. I used a ring that has a matte finish, and scratching the stone definitely left a mark. If you don’t want to leave this mark, pick a more discrete part of the jewelry to make a mark. For instance, I could have picked the knife’s edge of this ring which would have been less noticeable.

But let’s face it, I’m a jeweler with jeweler’s tools at my disposal so I’m just going to buff this scratch out with a little Scotch Brite. If you do this on a shiny piece of gold, you can use a polishing cloth to bring back the shine on the scratched part. Also, in many cases it is worth it to know the karat of gold so that you know the value of the gold jewelry that you purchased. The scratch can be fixed.

Cleaning up and neutralizing the acid after testing your gold

This is acid that you are dropping on the stone, so always use caution. Don’t touch the acid. I like to use a little baking soda to neutralize it and I keep the baking soda nearby during the process in case the acid leaks, or goes somewhere that it shouldn’t.

Sprinkle some baking soda on the acid on the stone and wait until it stops bubbling. Then clean and rinse off the stone and store everything safely for future use.

Ok but how do I use the acid test kit to find out if my jewelry is gold plated?

To do this test, you’ll need to mentally prepare yourself to really mark up the jewelry and even create a deeper scratch to get at the layer below. See, if all you do is test the gold plate layer, it will test as gold and that won’t tell you what you need to know about the make up of your jewelry.

Learn more about the difference between solid gold, gold fill and gold plating in my You Tube Video.

The acids for testing gold need access to the layer underneath the gold plating to be sure that it isn’t solid gold. To do this, I took a ring that, frankly, I already knew was plated (does this count as cheating?). I used one of my files to cut a small groove on the edge of this ring. You could use a nail file if you don’t have jeweler’s files. It may take a bit to make a groove that is enough to test.

Using the tweezers to hold the ring, drop a little bit of the 14 karat gold tester on the groove. If it turns dark like it does in the photo, that means it isn’t gold at all. Womp womp.

And there you have it! This is confirmed as a gold plated piece of jewelry.

Safety first, last and always when testing your gold jewelry

As always with these kinds of substances, keep out of the reach of children and store in a cool dry place. Don’t get it on your skin, if you do, baking soda and thorough washing of the place where it touched your skin are advised.

I recommend this kit as it offers you the most options for testing all of the metals. This is not an affiliate link, I just think this kit is comprehensive.

Do you have questions about testing your gold? Drop them in the comments below!

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