Rhodium Plating Service?

Jewelry Discussion
1

Can anyone recommend someone to rhodium plate a 14K White gold and
diamond pin. I am looking for someone who does quality work.

Thanks,
Joel

Joel Schwalb
@Joel_Schwalb
www.schwalbstudio.com

2

Joel,

Pardon me Joel; while on the subject of rhodium plating I’ll take
the opportunity of mentioning that two of my clients lately have
mentioned that some jewelers are offering a rhodium plating service
to jewelry freaks that are slaves to convention… they are
offering to “convert” people’s yellow gold jewelry to white ! I view
this as a sleazy tactic for bilking people into paying lots of money
for a service that is fraught with many pitfalls. We all know that
plating doesn’t last forever AND we know that soldering in the
vicinity of rhodium leads to discoloration and bubbling. Assuming
that the customer is king, I think that the only responsible
approach to this application is to be sure to tell the customer
about the pitfalls and attempt to discourage the practice. After
all, when the plating starts to fail , the customer needs to know
that stripping the remaining plating can be an expensive process
which has a capability of damaging the piece. Sorry about “butting
in” Ron MIlls, Mills Gem Co. Los Osos, Ca.

3

Ron,

In this particular case the customer is aware of all that you point
out. This is for a diamond and 14K White pin that she will wear
infrequently and wants the whiter color of rhodium.

Joel

Joel Schwalb
@Joel_Schwalb
www.schwalbstudio.com

4

in response to the comment

jewelry freaks that are slaves to convention...... they are
offering to "convert" people's yellow gold jewelry to white ! I
view this as a sleazy tactic for bilking people into paying lots of
money for a service that is fraught with many pitfalls.

i dont know how far you can go but i think you can up 14 karat to 24
karat then re-alloy it back down with white alloy. if you have 10
grams of 14 karat i believe the formula is:

10 grams x 14 karat = 140
10 grams x 24 karat = 240

240 - 140 = 100 divided by 10 (the difference between the starting
and ending karat)

i believe adding 10 grams of 24 karat will alloy the 14 karat back
up to 24 karat resulting with 20 grams of 24 karat. then if you
alloy it back down you will end up with alround 35 grams of 14 karat
white gold.

maybe one of the metal scientists could confirm this formula. i have
never had to go up to 24 k only from 10k to 14k

Matthew
www.mhgjewelry.com

5 
maybe one of the metal scientists could confirm this formula. i
have never had to go up to 24 k only from 10k to 14k

Uh, Matthew?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but you’re mistaken. Raising the
karat of gold alloys can be done, but only to a point in any
reasonable sense.

You cannot alloy lower karat gold all the way up to 24K, at least
not reasonably. 24K gold means essentially pure gold with no alloying
metals at all other than the traces allowed by tolerances in legal
definitions of 24K, which are pretty small, generally less than 5
parts per thousand of alloy, and most of us would prefer less than
one part per thousand. While you can add 24K gold to 14K or other
karat golds and thereby raise the karat, you are not, in the
process, removing the alloying metals, only reducing their percentage
in the total. As you raise the karat, the amount of pure gold you
need to add rises quickly, since the non gold alloy needs to be
compensated for by greater and greater amounts of pure gold as the
desired end karat is raised. To raise any significant quantity of 14K
gold to 24K would mean adding so much 24K to the mix as to mean the
original significant quantity of alloy now constituted less than
about a half percent of the total. You’d need to be then dealing in
kilos of 24K gold, not grams. Not usually a reasonable solution.

And remember that if you raise the karat by adding pure gold to an
alloy, and then wish to alloy it back down to some different color, if
you still have existing prior alloy in the mix, you may have a
complex time of it to calculate the desired alloy composition, as
that existing prior alloy is still there, even if in more dilute
form.

To raise 14K gold all the way to 24K you have to actually remove the
alloy. That’s called refining, and is a chemical seperation of the
metals, not a melting and alloying process. Once you’ve refined the
gold, of course, you can alloy it back down to whatever you want.

Peter Rowe

6

It must be late…You cannot alloy up to 24karat… 24karat is after
all…pure gold…

7 
 i believe adding 10 grams of 24 karat will alloy the 14 karat
back up to 24 karat resulting with 20 grams of 24 karat. then if
you alloy it back down you will end up with alround 35 grams of 14
karat white gold.

That’s not how it works. 24K being pure gold, the only way to bring
14K up to 24K is by refining it. Adding 24K to 14K will raise the
karat, sure, and you will get progressively closer to 24K, but you
will not reach 24K, as you have not removed the alloying metals, you
have just diluted them.

Regards,
Lee

8

No matter how much pure gold you add you will never end up with pure
gold if you start with 14k. You could eventually add enough gold to
get the alloy content down below the allowable impurity limits for
24k but it would take a lot. If in your example you started with 10
grams you would need to add 1,027.5 grams of 24k gold to turn 10
grams of 14k into somthing that would assay out to within the
tolerances (4 parts per thousand ) for 24k gold…

Jim

James Binnion
@James_Binnion
James Binnion Metal Arts

360-756-6550

9

Matt,

You wrote that you “believe adding 10 grams of 24 karat will alloy
the 14 karat back up to 24 karat resulting with 20 grams of 24
karat.” Really? Think about that for a moment… If you have 10
grams of blood-red paint, and add another 10 grams of white paint,
will you wind up with 20 grams of pure white paint, or just a less
intense version of the red? The only safe, reasonably feasible and
guaranteed effective way to purify 14KYG back to its 24K state is to
send it to a refinery, where they’ll utilize one of the many acidic
or electrolytic approaches available to them to separate the pure
metal from the various others that were initially alloyed with it, in
order to reach the lower karat value. No matter how much pure gold
you add to an alloy, you’ll always wind up with an alloy, of one
percentage or another.

Best regards,
Doug
Douglas Turet, G.J.,
Turet Design
P.O. Box 242
Avon, MA 02322-0242
Tel: (508) 586-5690
Fax: (508) 586-5677
doug. at .turetdesign.com

10

Joel,

Did you find someone to plate your pin? We have a plating set up at
work. Contact me off line.

Rodney
Litho’s Jewelry
@Rodney_Carroll1

11 
Did you find someone to plate your pin? We have a plating set up
at work. Contact me off line.

Thanks to those who responded with on a rhodium plating
service. One response was from Marie Somos, right here in the town
where I live. She took care of the job promptly, no shipping and
insurance needed. Thanks to Marie.

Joel

Joel Schwalb
@Joel_Schwalb

12

I recommend me to plate the pin. I would be happy to do it for you.
if interested mail me back.

Andrew Ourada
Owner Sandy’s Jewelry
Holdrege, NE