Masking pearles for rhodium plating

Thanks for the lesson re pearls Peter. My understanding of it all is
much clearer thank to yourself and others who have replied. I can’t
see myself ever getting into rhodium plating as I really don’t like
the practice. If I ever do anything with white gold, I will be
buying palladium white alloy which is readily available and doesn’t
need to be plated with rhodium. (I have a number of pieces of white
gold jewellery that were bought years ago and the rhodium has worn
off leaving the mildly yellow colour of whatever alloy was used. I no
longer wear such pieces because of this). So hopefully I’ll not be
in such a position as to need to “polish” a pearl but this thread has
taught me a few things I didn’t previously know about pearls so
thanks to all.

Helen
UK

What I usually do with pearls before rhodium plating is give them a
good long blast with the steamer to loosen up the epoxy and remove
the pearl. then do the sizing and rhodium and reglue the pearl. With
epoxy that sets up hard in an hour or so you can have the whole thing
done in less than half a day.

charlie

Some lightweight mountings have a thin bar across the opening with
the pearl peg rising up from it. It's very hard to get that hot
enough to release the pearl by heating up the shank. 

A method I use from time to time is to heat the tips of a pair of
blunt, heavy tweezers (I continually re-shape soldering tweezers, so
I have a couple of pairs that are extremely blunt for just this
purpose). Get the tips red hot and grab onto the bar or base of the
post as close to the pearl as possible. Start twisting the pearl
gently, but not so hard as to twist off the post. It should start to
move after a few seconds. If not, try again. I can avoid having to
heat the whole piece up doing this, but it’s uses are limited. I use
it anytime I can get the tweezers on or near the post. Especially
good for pearl studs. I never (sorry John, almost never :wink: re-glue
just one, I always (well, almost always) unglue the other one and
re-glue both. Cuts down on the re-do’s. “I just had this earring
fixed and it came off again in less than a week! I know it was the
one you did because the glue is brown. You can’t see the glue on the
old one, see?”

Another way to do this is to use an electric soldering iron instead
of the tweezers, but then you have to figure out how to hold it all.

Dave