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I run a watch page on Facebook and one of my followers/readers has asked a really interesting question regarding a post on the Breguet Classique 5157 ...
The dial is made from solid yellow gold, but is then silver plated. I'm guessing it's silver plated mainly for the colour. However why not start with a silver dial, or a white gold dial? Is gold easier to engine turn to create the guilloche dial?
Any ideas? :)
The more precious metals the better, right?
Silver is very soft, probably not stable enough.
"white gold" is often just yellow gold that has been plated in rhodium.
Silver has a very own color. The modern white golds that are not plated and are actually some alloy (beware, often even alloys that are white-ish are actually plated with rhodium) usually have a rather grey hue.
I think that is the reason for plating gold with silver.
Iirc gold and silver react in a special way when plating takes place and create a strong bond (Cartier Tanks from the must series in vermeil... which is gold plated silver), so not much chance of pieces of plating coming off...