Rhodium plating without nickle under plate

Jewelry Discussion
1

Greetings everybody.

I have few questions, can silver jewellery be plated succesfully
with Rhodium by avoiding Nickel as under plate.?

Is is right to plate silver jewellery with Gold as underplate in
place of nickle and then with Rhodium.?, since Rhodium can be
directly plated on gold jewellery, is this right.?

Thanking you all in advance for your answers,which will help to find
the right way to avoid Nickle as under plate for plating silver
jewellery with Rhodium succesfully…

May all be Peaceful, healthy and Happy.

Umesh

2

I use Krohn rhodium solutions and according to their website, a
pre-plate isn’t necessary at all.

3

Umesh,namaskar

rhodium over silver -sure,but why? if you are strengthening it and
already using sterling as your base metal it’s a waste of rhodium
solution in my opinion. Fine silver:unless you are making sushi
sets, or sambar thali’s in which case the rhodium or platinum would
be fine as a protectant from high salt based sauces is equally
unecessary…why not just plate with silver on silver to hide any
solder seams,etc…? cheaper,same colour, and easily rationalized!

plating silver jewelry with gold underplate = another waste of
solution… Unless your BASE metal is nickle,one needs no plating over
any of it unless it’s purely asthetic,or you got a new digital plater
and you want to play with it…again,a waste of solution,but if you
have deep pockets plate away…but to what end??? What exactly are yo
u trying to accomplish?

R.E.Rourke

4 
rhodium over silver -sure,but why?

I was going to say this yesterday, but forgot - maybe it’s already
here somewhere. You can’t rhodium plate silver directly. Yes, it
will plate, but it will also contaminate the solution the moment it
touches it…

5

I know there are a few out there that really know their stuff. If
plating over silver contaminates the solution, please explain how or
why the solution is contaminated. Because I plate white gold and
sterling all the time with no problem. I even plate on mystery metal
(something white) for display models in the same solution.

Please break it down anyway you like. I understand chemistry.

Thanks
Rodney

6

I would agree that when plating you can do nickel before rhodium.
When plating white gold, do all the pre steps, electroclean,and then
straight to the rhodium bath

Andy The Tool Guy Kroungold
Phone 800-877-7777 ext 4194

7 
If plating over silver contaminates the solution, please explain
how

Rodney, there have been some posts here about certain solutions that
seem different. We use the Otto Frei rhodium, presumably just the
“standard” rhodium, I guess. I don’t know how it becomes
contaminated, chemically. I could figure it out, I guess. I do know
that the solution turns brownish black with silver in it, and the
plating turns grey. That’s just plating silver once.