Hello,
I bought a german silver bit infused with sweet copper to use for dressage. When I got it I wasn’t aware it was made with nickel, has anyone’s horses had bad reactions to nickel in bits? And if so should I be worried?
Thanks in advance!
Stainless steel can also have some nickel in it (and chromium too.)
It has been almost 50 years since I used nickel bits. I did not have any problems with them except for the center joint becoming thin. They always looked dull compared to the stainless steel bits, but you are not getting a pure nickel bit so I doubt you will have to worry about that. Pure nickel bits also bend rather easily but I have no knowledge about the German Silver bits doing this.
I have read (and I cannot remember where) that some horses are allergic to pure nickel.
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Sigh…there has been a lot of mis-information about nickel. You need not worry.
Your basic stainless steel bit is made from a type of stainless called “austenitic stainless” (vs martensitic) and contains 18% chromium, 8-10% nickel, 74% iron. The material if very inert…as a matter of fact variants of these materials are used in medical and dental applications.
Nickel silver is also called german silver. It is typically 60% copper, 20% nickel and 20% zinc and would be considered a type of “white brass.”
The nickel silver alloys are defined by the ASTM B-122 standard.
https://www.astm.org/DATABASE.CART/STD_REFERENCE/B122.htm
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Thank you! I was definitely a little worried about a reaction but this eases my mind!
I had a horse that just didn’t like Aurigan. . So it went back to my tack chest, and he got the stainless steel bit back.
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Aurigian is basically a red bras…try sticking brass in your mouth…it leaves a bitter taste.
And yes you salivate like a horse with the drools.
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Nickel bits tend to get hot faster too. They are often heavier as well. Back in the day, western folks liked them because they tended to make horses lower their heads (while not on the bit with contact).
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Ummm…not according to the laws of thermodynamics.
Faster than what? The coefficient of heat transfer for conduction for common metals used in bits is as follows in units of Watts / meter-K. You can see that Stainless has about 15% the heat transfer of iron.
Iron (like in sweet iron bits) is 94
Stainless Steel (austenitic) is 14
Yellow Brasses (Aurigian) is 111
Hmmmm. Personal experience? Maybe just that is seemed so…
