[bevansmw]

I was reading a little about it. Sterling was made as an alloy of silver, being roughly 92% silver and like 8% copper or something to make the silver harder as pure silver is soft. Evidentally the more you work sterling the harder it gets, so the peening of the end will cause the silver that is peened to harden as well as deform to hold the scales together.

I was a little more concerned about the corrosion issue, as silver is very low on the table that I referenced earlier and steel is about at the mid-point or so so with the silver in contact with the steel it'll form a sort of cell that will cause galvanic corrosion at the expense of the steel. I had originally thought to use CF tube to make bushings, but that has the same problem, graphite also being very low. The normal brass or nickel-silver pins are pretty close to steel in the table so I don't think it plays that much of a factor there. I bought some small ether tube that is resistant to fungus and moisture that I thought would help to keep the steel and silver separated in the pivot and prevent the potential for a hidden corrosion problem in the pivot.