[Jewelry making - Article 00751] - Re: [Orchid] Using platinum for the first time

[Theodore Curtis]

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    If you have little or no experience in working with platinum, I
    would recommend that you suggest white gold or palladium white gold
    to your customer. 

    While you could probably figure out the techniques you would need to
    fabricate a piece in platinum it would be a lot easier to make it in
    white gold. 

    The difficulties you will run into with platinum are as follows: 

    Platinum is much heavier, and costlier than silver which means that
    you need to be very careful about how you   price your piece in order
    to cover the material costs including waste. 

    Welding platinum can be done with a standard jewelers torch and a
    pair of protective welding glasses. but you have to be very careful
    not to contaminate your metal especially with steel, for example
    Tweezers or soldering picks. 

    you also need to make sure that the soldering platform that you use
    is very clean and can withstand very high temperatures. 

    Finishing platinum can be very frustrating because normal finishing
    compounds and techniques may not give you the results that you are
    trying to achieve. Ideally platinum needs to be sanded to almost a
    final finish using progressively finer grits of finishing paper and
    then finished with compounds designed especially for platinum alloys.
    To avoid contamination you should have sanding and polishing paper
    and wheels that are reserved for finishing only your platinum pieces. 

    If you have the option of using white gold this would probably be
    your best bet, but you will still need to be careful not to
    contaminate the material with the tools you use to do your silver
    work. 

Good Luck to you
Ted Curtis

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