Is platinum or wg better for pave/melee settings?

[amytude]

Just wondering if it matters at all or not. I am loving all these pave settings. TIA!!

 

[allan creates]

Without question platinum is the first choice for pavee work.

White gold, the real white kind is like stainless steel, and the result is very hard on the setter’s tools, they keep breaking off the cutting tips and the setter is left cursing through the job.

When the job is that hard to execute the setter keeps looking to get out as fast as possible and you end up with half a job.

A real artist loves to have platinum to do his work especially not cast platinum, but the real rolled out sheet type as the metal is compressed to perfection. “The old fashioned way.”

Oh yes there are the imitations, like palladium white gold to simulate platinum but they are too soft and not bright. You know that palladium white gold contains pure gold mixed with palladium, for 18K there would be 25% palladium, and in different percentages of palladium those mixes are what is used to solder platinum.

So if one used palladium white gold you would be using some form of platinum solder as your base material.

Not a pretty sight, but many do that and cover it up with rhodium plating to get around from using the real thing.

Allan Creates
http://www.ringlock.com
P.F.F. Ring Clasps

 

[JCJD]

Date: 2/2/2005 9

5:45 AM
Author: allan creates
Oh yes there are the imitations, like palladium white gold to simulate platinum but they are too soft and not bright. You know that palladium white gold contains pure gold mixed with palladium, for 18K there would be 25% palladium, and in different percentages of palladium those mixes are what is used to solder platinum.

So if one used palladium white gold you would be using some form of platinum solder as your base material.

Not a pretty sight, but many do that and cover it up with rhodium plating to get around from using the real thing.


Allan Creates

http://www.ringlock.com

P.F.F. Ring Clasps

So I''m NOT going crazy!!! I knew that the solder between my ering''s shank and basket turned yellowish between cleanings!! I was trying to convince myself that it''s just the bad office lighting! Thanks for this info Allan!!

 

[PhillipSchmidt]

What!

Paladium w/g alloys are not hard to set. Platinum is far harder on the setting tools. It is easy to colour match w/g solder with palladium w/g. Any decent jeweller will have half a dozen plates of solder to match with whatever he tends to work on. What is this 25% business? I have never heard of an alloy with only w/g and palladium, it isn't practical. You need a catalyst to help create the mix. There are problematical w/g alloys but a high pladium alloy is pretty malliable and though it takes a slightly different mindset it is not that hard to use.

The difference in platinum alloys as far as hardness is concerned is pretty huge and the ruthenium alloys are like bricks. They send you to the sharpener more often and if your graver point chips in the the metal you have to heat it up a few times and take it to the acid which is an increadibly annoying waste of time. Having said that, there is no reason to rush the job through. You just charge more. In fact, I would argue that the job would be better because of the extra time taken and therefore the extra chances to see any rough workmanship and fix it.

Cobalt/platinum alloys while not too hard are also hell on your tools.

You can't use platinum solder on w/g. Even the easy solder has a higher melting temp then w/g. The easy solder in platinum is a horrible alloy and by no means preferable to a good white white gold solder of which there are many. If you put a piece of plat solder over a w/g join all that happens is the heat it transfers creates a fuse across the join and can actually make for a better job. The only problem is that in doing it also melts into the gold and you can only file it out - you loose metal that can't afford to be lost, so it no good.

Dave is right about using platinum solder on platinum. It costs a lot, but it lasts a long time. It takes longer to mount because of the heat and the tools needed to work in such heat. You can't un-solder plat. Once you solder something with plat solder you can't heat it up and pull it away again - you have to cut it away, so that means you must be more sure. Platinum always requires closer joins regardless of the solder used.

I don't know what percentage of jewellers use w/g solder on platinum but I suspect quite a lot. It is legal. I have noticed that if the solderer used too much heat and for too long the alloy breaks apart and the fine gold leeches out. This is why many platinum rings have ugly yellowish lines (or spills). The problem is easily fixed by rhodium plating as the join will invariably be in a place that never wears. Not that this is an excuse.

Just wanting to clear this up a bit.

Phillip

Melee in titanium now that would be a good question...

 

[allan creates]

Fine platinum work cannot be done with a laser. Laser is good for welding heavy parts not for the assembly of fine wire work in the classical sense where the solder is miniscule and must flow out of sight, not what you see today big lugs carved in wax and heavy cast. Everybody became a jeweler when the wax process came about. Any soapstone carver became a jeweler. That is not jewelry.

A real jeweler takes a lug of platinum and makes plate and wire and builds a fine piece that looks like jewelry. Oh yes you will all jump in and say that there are some nice carved pieces that look good but in the most cases it is junk. Look at all those heavy pieces cast with dirty (contaminated) platinum with those cracks like an earth quake, and you just hit the shank with a mallet on the mandrill and it cracks again. That is not jewelry. That is where the laser comes in the best to patch up (cover up) the cracks on a bad casting.

I can''t believe how large diamonds are set in ugly die struck settings. Doesn’t anybody know how to work the right way anymore? What ever happened to nice wire settings that look like jewelry and not pop corn rings?

There are a lot of people walking around with rings that the jewelers are just praying they don’t get a good knock as there would be another crack, known in the trade as platinum that crumbles (bad casting) and the assembly is just patched up to get it out of the shop. I have seen rings fall on the floor and see the prong come off. (Sound familiar?)

Platinum solder is made with different percentages of pure gold and palladium plain and simple.

Lowest grade 1,100 Degrees solder 9 parts gold 1-part palladium (only good for tacking parts together temporarily for preparing parts while under construction. Jewelers have used it thinking that they were trying their best to use platinum solder on a platinum job only to end up with junk.

Repairs are best done with high-grade hard white gold solder on platinum work it is the whitest and blends in with the platinum.

Sizing the shanks on platinum should always be welded that is great for laser.

1,300 degrees solder 8 parts gold 2 parts palladium (So So)

1,400 degrees solder 4 parts gold and 4 parts palladium (50 - 50) Excellent for final assembly the best.


1,600 and 1,700 are the only solders that contain a trace of platinum. And are very hard to work with as they require lots of heat 1,700 is almost like welding.

1,600 degrees solder .96 parts palladium .04 platinum

1,700 degrees solder .850 parts palladium .150 platinum

Now you know why there are color issues with the low-grade platinum group solders.

Allan Creates

http://www.ringlock.com

P.F.F. Ring Clasps

 

[PhillipSchmidt]

Where are these people getting their casting done? You can have porosity, but no less then cast gold. It really depends on the casting method and the alloys used. If anybody is finding their products cracking, I'd say they would completely change their method, buy a new machine or like most of us do, outsource the casting. It is unreal what you say. What alloy are they using? What machines?

I agree with you regarding the benefits of not casting and I know that the others who have posted on this thread would agree, in part, too. Of course hand forged jewellery is better. There are too many reasons to describe here. On the other hand the customer doesn't always want to pay for hand forged jewellery and why should they? In cases where the platinum is cast the end result is a strong malleable metal with no cracking no pitting and with a grain close enough it takes a better polish then any gold.

There is no argument to make about jewellery being finished poorly because it is not the issue. If I have one major problem with cast designs it is the lack of design potential, as the finishing must be thought of beforehand and the piece designed to be easily finished. Hand forging should be used much more IMO, but that is the customers choice...

As far as platinum solder goes. Platinum solder has been available for years. As usual in jewellery with thousands of people doing the best they can there have always been hundreds of platinum solder alloys to choose from. I am not sure why it has taken plumb so long to market their 950/900 platinum solders. I have always used very high platinum content solders.

I don't know where you got your info from, but I was not aware of this. I have been reading up on palladium solders and I see no correlation with palladium content and flow points. I for one would like to hear more from you on that matter.

Phillip

As far as Dave and his laser welder is concerned, I have no idea how much he can achieve. Who does?

 

[PhillipSchmidt]

Sorry Dave and Steve for mixing your names up. It is late here.

 

[amytude]

Well, gentlemen, I seemed to have opened up quite a can of worms here. Ahem...anyway, yes I am looking at things from a "safety" perspective. I have 2 toddlers, so I need a design (and metal) that will be able to withstand daily use.

 

[allan creates]

No, I never did and never want to, I have never been a repair man, I have done repairs on occasion but tried to avoid getting involved with repairs. I have always done fine work and know the ins and outs.

See a copy of a posting I made several years ago on the platinum issue at an other site.

This is a professional report;
I just happened upon this site and wanted to share this with you all. Plating can be controlled by painting nail polish on the parts that you don''t want to plate before dipping the item into the Electro plating bath, usually a small beaker the size of a coffee pot is used. Those brown spots are low voltage electric burns likely from several rings at a time on the copper hook in the rhodium bath as the hook is shaken around in the bath to expose all parts to get a good coating. those burn spots are where the rings shorted out (ouch).

I have been a top jewelry craftsman for 40 years. I know exactly what you are all going through, and this is the reason the jewelry business is struggling with this problem. White gold is the poor man''s platinum look. Money is the problem, it costs too much to use a good high grade nickel content to be bright on it''s own.

Because we can only re-melt white gold 2 times to be safe as the nickel inside the white gold becomes very brittle when over heated and gives lots of problems during fabrication, cracking (referred to as dry gold) and then there is pin holes, air pockets caused from over heating where oxygen is left in the metal as it is cast. Jewelers hate that as they have to block them up to get a job out as they usually pop out at the last minute when the job is all finished, and then there is what we call frosting (hundreds of tiny tiny air holes in groups that leave a dull spot that never can be brought up to a shinny surface) When casting parts we must use more gold than necessary then the scraps (trimmings) are used to melt again for another cast, usually they should try to go half used gold with half fresh gold that is to help tenderize the mix so as to try to avoid cracking gold. (Sound familiar)

Why do claws fall off a diamond with hardly any force? Some people buy old gold and even dump it in to the pot and prey that it works out. (Not knowing how many times it was melted when it was made say 30 or 40 years ago and then you end up with a patched up mess of a job) Because the gold was melted too many times or was over heated right from the start, that makes the gold brittle, I have seen claws that were holding on by a prayer that I could crack off with my fingernail. It is a big cover up as they know what the problem is but can''t afford to use fresh gold every time. The half way effort is to lower the nickel content to tenderize the gold, hence the yellowish white gold that has to be rhodium plated to cover it up.

Cartier of Paris started a trend oh 30 years ago where they set their diamonds in 18K yellow gold trying to convince people that it was a style, but I knew exactly what the reason was that they started that. It was to avoid going to white gold, as they didn''t always use platinum for cost reasons. You see 18K yellow gold is like butter it never cracks when working with it, it is alloyed with copper and silver, both very soft malleable metals, The nickel used to alloy white gold is the same as in stainless steel that is why it is very hard to work with

The jewelry store sales people would not know anything about this. Platinum is also a big problem these days as every body is casting things they shouldn''t be doing, just to follow the trend, a lot of platinum castings are cracking as the metal was not hot enough when cast (Platinum is different it cannot be burnt you could sit on it with a big welding torch for a whole day at over 3,000 degrees and it would only get more pure and more beautiful, There is also the problem of people buying old platinum jewelry to get platinum at a bargain, then sometimes if that was platinum with some contamination… then bingo there goes the whole lot when it is mixed in, and that is another way where you may find cracking appear as well.

But the shops that are out there are greedy as anybody would be, and the process to cast items is overloaded by putting too many pieces in each cast. A good cast should not go over 1 or 1 ½ ounces of platinum to be able to blast the hell out of it so it comes out tender and good to work with. But the society we live in says hey we could get more in and I''ve known some to go for 3 or 4 ounces at a time, the result is the temperature at the center of the melt is not consistent and by the time the metal gets into the cast some parts are not hot enough, and those parts give trouble such as cracking (we call it crumbling) Hey it happened to me too "that" is how I know. Even small amounts like I did if not heated enough cracked and had to be re processed at a higher heat.

Platinum in it''s real use should be hand wrought to be at it''s best, but under the pressure of the cost of living short cuts are used. Hey the same goes for the big carmakers these days a lot of junk is out there in the name of cost. Now we see that the batteries in the smart bombs were no good, but were told to pass them in the name of profits, now there is a case where it looks like that may be the reason the solders were killed by friendly fire.

Only the rich have the access to the (possibility) of getting the real thing, if they know the right guy that knows what he is doing and not just talking. Walk the walk and talk the talk.
Hope you appreciated my effort, but I cannot change the world alone.

Allan Creates
http://www.ringlock.com
P.F.F. Ring Clasps

 

[PhillipSchmidt]

I asked an engraver which metal he preffered not long ago. I hung on his answer as I always do, as his skills are phenominal.

He doesn''t care if he is engraving a gun, a brass plate, a ring, silver gold, it doesn''t matter for him.

I posted that platinum can have its issues with melee regarding tooling. It is true to a point for me. Small diamonds don''t need much metal to be moved. Larger stones do and after an hour or so when your wrist aches you know which metal your working on. If you have to sharpen your tools more often then so be it. You charge a bit more. The figure barely impacts on the final price anyway.

This is in regards to hand done setting. Rings with the melee cast in place don''t need any special tooling.

As far the end result is concerned it really should make no difference.

In the end I would probably suggest you buy a ring according to your preference in metal in general. There is no distinguishable security difference. I have an inate preference toward platinum, but I could not actually say platinum is better.

 

[PhillipSchmidt]

Allen you paraphrased a report (from you?) about gold into platinum. No wonder I am confused.

What are you doin man?

 

[pqcollectibles]

I have never seen any ring made of any material fall on the floor and a prong come off... ever.

I''m rather surprised by that comment. I''m not a jeweler or a smith so I don''t hear near the amount of bizarre stories I''m sure jewelers and smiths do. People have strange things happen all the time.

I have a 14K yg ring that I had to have repaired because a prong broke and I lost a stone. The ring was maybe 10 years old when that happened. Fortunately it was a small accent stone so the repair wasn''t hugely expensive. I didn''t drop the ring on the floor either. Just a little ding on something and poof, the prong and stone were gone.

 

[allan creates]

I don''t know where your "article" came from but it''s riddled with inaccuracies and false and misleading information. Pure ridiculous, erroneous, false, propaganda.



It is advisable to refrain from commentary in order to avoid revealing ones ignorance.

Than to advance ones opinions and removing any possible misconceptions.

Allan Creates

http://www.ringlock.com

P.F.F. Ring Clasps