Platinum wire knots & retips

Dear Loren, I make many “knot design” rings and earrings in
platinum. In Australia we have a 5% copper alloy platinum and I
have no trouble forming the annealed metal. The heaviest knot I
have so far made was from 4mm x 1.8mm which I later set with
baguettes. Yanking on two disposable ends, and with some
judicious tapping with a 4 oz. hammer, I was able to form quite
a tight, nicely shaped granny knot.

I forged down the two ends and bent them around to form the
shank then cut the knot in half, opened out and set all my
baguettes, then soldered it up again using 1020 platinum solder.

Very interested to read the posts about platinum retipping.
Ignorance must be bliss for me, because I have always retipped
platinum rings with 1020 solder. If I’m retipping platinum on
18ct white or yellow gold settings I’ve always used hard white
gold solder which melts around 800C. I’ve never had any problems
since I was taught to do it this way as an apprentice 40 years
ago.

Having always worked with diamonds and been properly trained, I
and have always been cautious before soldering - protecting with
boracic, never doing it with stones that are suspect or included
and, of course, more recently being on the alert for
fracture-filled or irradiated stones. These I simply unset, then
reset.

Perhaps the most distressing thing that has ever happened to me
vis-a-vis diamonds is to have to bear the “slings and arrows” of
accusations of political incorrectness for daring to use diamonds
and being vilified as a “participant exploiter” when I won four
Diamonds International Awards. Such is life :frowning: However, my
colleagues, friends, and the students I teach reckon I’m OK :slight_smile:
Kind regards, Rex from Oz