I don't know the 'official' answer, but from my experience, the gold filled beads i've bought from this site have been excellent - no tarnishing - no silver showing through. I've made bracelets that have been through dishwater, as well, with no discoloration. Vermeil, on the other hand wears and reveals silver pretty quickly

The hole size of a bead will vary depending on the bead manufacturer and the material that the bead is made out of. You can contact the Customer Service department with the product code of the bead that you're looking at, and they can measure the hole size of the bead for you.

Dead soft wire is the most flexible wire, and can be manipulated very easily. Half hard wire is wire that has been hardened but is still able to be manipulated and twisted. Half hard wire is usually used for making simple and wrapped loops in wire working.

Gold-plated products have a very thin layer (seven-millionths of an inch) of gold, while 14K/20 gold-filled products must have at least one-twentieth of their entire weight in 14K gold.

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Gold-filled describes when a layer of gold is mechanically bonded with heat and pressure to one or more surfaces of the supporting base metal, then rolled or drawn to a given thickness. In the jewelry industry the quantity of gold must be at least 1/20th by weight of the total product. Under FTC regulations, a product may be marked as 14, 12 or 10kt gold-filled. Karat measurement of the gold content must be part of the marking or designation, so when you see our items listed as 14/20 it means it is 14k gold equaling 5% of the weight of the piece. Gold-filled items will remain gold for a lifetime if cared for properly. The occasional silver spot is from solder holding joints together. Unless you are using harsh chemicals or abrasives, the gold layer will stay gold for years to come!

try putting on transperant colour nailpolish over it so that it will have some coat which protects from waterand retains the paint...

hope this helped you

cheers