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Claspwork
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Claspwork · Jewellery and fittings

Gold on top.
Brass underneath.

The gold is two and a half micrometres thick. When it wears through, the brass is what touches you.

Everyone selling plated jewellery knows this. Almost nobody prints the number. Every piece here lists what meets your skin, what is under it, and how much there is.

See all 45 piecesMetal Match

Cross-section, plated piece

Layers drawn in true proportion to each other

18k gold
the layer on top · 2.5 µm
Brass
the base metal · contains nickel
Your skin
what the base metal meets once the gold is gone

µm2.5 micrometres of 18k gold over brassof gold

Four things,
on all 45.

Contact metal
Named to the grade. Not “stainless”, but 316L.
Base metal
On every plated piece. It is what you get in the end.
Layer thickness
In micrometres. The reason two studs cost different amounts.
Nickel release
EN 1811 status, stated plainly — including when there is no report yet.
Four square metal sample plates in a two by two grid: bead-blasted titanium, brushed stainless steel, polished sterling silver and yellow gold plating, each with a visibly different surface grain.

Four contact surfaces

We sort by what
meets skin.

The lines below run from the lowest measured nickel release at the contact surface to the pieces where you have to watch the plating wear. That order is deliberate. It is not sorted by price.

The shelf

Eight to start with.

All 45 pieces

Why two identical studs cost different amounts

0.5, 2.5
and 5.0 µm.

Same brass core. Same shape. Same finish. The only difference is how long the piece stayed in the plating bath. The bars below are drawn at true proportion to one another, so the tallest is exactly ten times the shortest.

0.5µm

A flash coat. This is what most jewellery described only as gold plated actually carries.

On the same stud: $18

2.5µm

Five times the gold on an identical brass core. The bath ran five times longer.

On the same stud: $32

5.0µm

As thick as electroplating goes before the layer starts to lift instead of wear.

On the same stud: $78

Macro photograph of a gold plated ring shoulder where the plating has worn away at the high point, exposing duller brass beneath.

This is what wearing through looks like.

Plating wears. When it does, the base metal touches your skin. How long that takes depends on the thickness, where you wear it, and how often. We list the thickness so you can compare.

Two of our plated pieces are built on 316L instead of brass. They wear through too — the difference is what is waiting underneath.

The steel-based plated pieces

Nickel release

Measured,
not assumed.

Under REACH Annex XVII, a piece worn in prolonged contact with skin must release less than 0.5 µg/cm²/week of nickel. For anything worn in a piercing the limit is 0.2 µg/cm²/week. Plated pieces have to still meet the limit after a simulated wear and corrosion pre-treatment.

That is a laboratory measurement made per production batch, to EN 1811. Where we hold a report, the reference is on the product page. Where we do not, the page says so in the same place, in the same words, rather than leaving a blank.

What we will not do is tell you a piece is gentle on skin, or safe for you, or unlikely to bother you. Those are claims about your body. What we have are facts about metal.

Read the metals page

Metal Match

Three questions.
None about
your health.

We do not ask what you are allergic to. We ask what you have worn and when it went wrong — because the timing tells us something useful. Trouble that starts months in usually means plating that wore through, and that points at a different piece than trouble that starts in the first afternoon.

Nothing you answer is stored against you, used to build a profile, or used for marketing.

Start Metal Match
  1. 01

    Has metal jewellery ever given you trouble?

  2. 02

    If so, when did it start?

  3. 03

    Do you know what the piece was made of?

We can tell you what metal is in each piece and show you the test reports. We can’t tell you what you react to. If reactions are frequent or severe, that’s a question for a doctor, not a shop.

Six lines

Three years to report a fault

For the first two of them, if something is wrong, we have to show it was not faulty when you got it. Not the other way round.

Faults and claims

Fourteen days to change your mind

No reason needed. You may try a piece on the way you would in a shop, and having tried it on is never a reason for us to refuse the return.

Right of withdrawal

One price, in US dollars

Every price on this site includes 25% moms. Standard shipping is free over $60. There is no membership, no subscription and no store credit.

Shipping and returns