I just cast a 7mm wide platinum wedding band with a comfort fit for a
friend, but the casting shrank much more than I expected. Without any clean
up it’s a size 11, and I need to get it to 11-3/4. I briefly tried
hammering it on a ring mandrel to open it up a bit, but then thought I
might try annealing it first to make it a little easier on myself.
Does anyone have any recommendations for annealing platinum (I’ve heard you
should run it through an ultrasonic first, for example), or for getting
this ring bigger without having to recarve it in wax and start again?
Bump it up on a ring stretcher , if you don’t have one find some one that you can borrow 5 minutes of time with. It should easily stretch 3/4 of a size. It shoudn’t need annealing.
What Wadedesigns1 said. And “put it through an ultrasonic first”?
Only unless it’s really dirty or still has investment on it.
Jo Haemer www.timothywgreen.com
I unfortunately live in the middle of nowhere with few jewelry friends to
be found. The closest ring enlarger is 45 minutes away at a jeweler’s and
I’ll be charged $150 to use it
Noted on the ultrasonic! I’ll try bumping it up on a mandrel again today,
too.
If your going to do the work you need the tools. You can buy a decent stretcher for $400. I have had mine for 40 years. It has paid for itself 1000 times over.
Where are you located? You might be surprised who is on here that may be close by. You might make a mold of it before you do anything. Just in case.
Charlie
I find there’s a great educational benefit to my making mistakes and I’ve made that one more than once. I just try, often unsuccessfully, to move on to new mistakes rather than repeating the old ones.
Thanks so much for the link, Janet. And Mark, I’m a big fan of your
strategy! Fortunately the stakes were low on this one, and I’ll be adding a
stretcher to my shopping list ASAP.
) with one! Hopefully won’t be making the same mistake again!