Frustrated about getting unplated white gold

[MissStepcut]

So, I am trying to get a plain solitaire setting for my H colored emerald cut. I had wanted to leave my white gold unplated, and was excited to possibly work with Stuller X1, but now the jeweler I was planning to work with is telling me I can only do that if I use Stuller stock pieces. I don't like any of the heads on their website, and frankly, the shanks don't look like what I had in mind either.

I know I am crossing over into "problem customer" at this point. The jeweler isn't giving me a very helpful description of the white gold when unplated (the rep just says it's a "nickel alloy" and "candlelight white"). Can anyone help me figure out how "whellow" this is going to look??

 

[yssie]

I have a J in 18k Ni wg unplated
[URL='https://www.pricescope.com/community/threads/yssies-new-ring-is-here-2-7-three-stone-in-unplated-wg.144010/']https://www.pricescope.com/community/threads/yssies-new-ring-is-here-2-7-three-stone-in-unplated-wg.144010/[/URL]

and Ns in 14k Ni wg unplated
[URL='https://www.pricescope.com/community/threads/i-caved-rg-cushions-bezels-milgrain-dbtybracelet.161562/']https://www.pricescope.com/community/threads/i-caved-rg-cushions-bezels-milgrain-dbtybracelet.161562/[/URL]

Both alloys are significantly creamy - they will not in any way "match" the colour of an H, even from pavilion view.

 

[MissStepcut]

thank you so much, Yssie. I was seriously about to cry with frustration. I don't know why I am letting this get to me so much. The whole project has been way more frustrating and way less fun than I had hoped.

I don't want the colors to match, but I did want the gold to make my H look whiter by comparison... do you think WG will over-correct too much, and make the WG look yellower up against my H?

 

[CrisM]

Reinstein & Ross in NYC makes a beautiful unplated white gold. Try contacting them. I imagine they are happy to supply pictures.

 

[MissStepcut]

Reinstein & Ross in NYC makes a beautiful unplated white gold. Try contacting them. I imagine they are happy to supply pictures.

For various reasons, switching jewelers isn't an option at this point. Thanks for the recommendation though! Someone else will probably be interested

 

[yssie]

thank you so much, Yssie. I was seriously about to cry with frustration. I don't know why I am letting this get to me so much. The whole project has been way more frustrating and way less fun than I had hoped.

I don't want the colors to match, but I did want the gold to make my H look whiter by comparison... do you think WG will over-correct too much, and make the WG look yellower up against my H?

I'm sorry MissS. Unplated was a leap of faith for me too - and now I'm completely in love! On the plus side, if you find you hate it the fix is just a rhodium plate away, and if you find yourself longing for it after you've plated it you can have the plating electrochemically removed...

I haven't seen the Stuller specialty alloys, and I don't know the exact alloys of my pieces, other than that they are definitely nickel alloy. The 14k wg is visibly less creamy than the 18k - the 18k could pass for 10k yellow, it's definitely visibly creamy and noone will ever mistake it for icy "white gold" or "platinum".

I think an H is very, very white still - I picked the colour because I wanted my J and the metal to 'match', and they do (the 18k is a tad yellower than the stone from profile in most lights, now I think 14k would actually have been a better colour match but I wanted at least 18k gold). The effect, though, is that the entire piece looks 'warm' - put that same stone in an icy wg temp and it's a totally different look, though it's tinted enough that the body colour becomes visible - I don't think that would be the case for your H, truly. If you're going for "white" - icy white stone, icy white setting, icy white aesthetic I'd recommend sticking with plated white or one of those specialty alloys, or maybe a different metal - palladium? plat? - it's been my experience that the more contrast there is between metal colour and stone colour, the whiter the stone looks. More discussion in Yenny's thread [URL='https://www.pricescope.com/community/threads/which-metal-compliments-a-warm-stone-best.160706/']https://www.pricescope.com/community/threads/which-metal-compliments-a-warm-stone-best.160706/[/URL]