How To Turn A YELLOW ring WHITE!

[Music] my name is Jordan this is modern Goldsmith and today we're gonna be turning this yellow gold ring white gold and by turning it white gold I don't mean actually turning it white gold rather I'm gonna be doing rhodium plating to it today and rhodium plating is basically a form of electroplating or a thin layer of rhodium white rhodium we'll go over the yellow gold ring and turn it bright white to begin I'm gonna take the ring over to the polisher the rhodium really likes to stick to a nice clean polished surface and also make sure that everything is nice and even and you don't have some spots that look dull and other spots that look shiny we just want everything to look nice and uniform to show a nice comparison I'm also gonna be rhodium plating this white gold ring rhodium is usually put on white gold not on yellow gold that's because white gold will start to yellow after a little while by plating it and polishing up you restore that bright white look there's bound to be a little bit of old rhodium on this white gold ring so I take it to the polisher and I run it under this wheel the wheel will remove the old rhodium [Music] after the Rings have been polished I take them over to my ultrasonic cleaner and I drop them in the basket this ultrasonic looked pretty dirty the last few videos so I cleaned it just for you guys I hope you enjoy the ultrasonic cleaner works perfectly to remove all of that polishing compound off of the Rings in order to rhodium plate you want your rings to be as clean as they can possibly be part of the cleaning process that is extra vital is steam cleaning I like to shoot underneath the stones to make sure any oils or dirt is removed from the ring to achieve the best result I do a three step process first is a lecture cleaner second is activated the third step is the rhodium itself rhodium is actually an element on the periodic table of elements that's been liquefied this beaker is 600 milliliters and I'll fill the rhodium almost to the top [Music] you're not going to want to drink any of this stuff it could quite possibly lead to your demise and this is the electroplating machine or rectifier this controls the current which will be used in the electroplating process itself the three steps I mentioned earlier you can see them in their individual beakers here we have the electro cleaning on the left the activator or acid in the middle and the rhodium plating on the right this is a titanium anode it's dropped down into the beaker with the rhodium and basically the positive line from the rectifier runs down and attaches to this and that allows current to run through the rhodium and to plate onto the ring we talked about the positive side of the rectifier this is the negative side which is attached to a piece of gold wire this gold wires then used to attach to the ring [Music] the positive alligator clip is attached to the anode in the electric cleaner the rectifier is turned on and the voltage is turned up I then dip the ring into the electrode cleaner you can pretty much infer from the name of this step that the ring is being cleaned right now this step removes any lingering oils dirt or anything else that could contaminate the rhodium after the electro cleaner I dip it in distilled water for five seconds and then we come over to the activator this step activates the metal and pretty much gets it ready to receive the rhodium plating after that I'm also going to dip it in distilled water for another five seconds turn down the voltage [Music] I also need to transfer the alligator clip from the anode of the electroplate er over to the anode of the rhodium plating I then dip the ring into the rhodium bath I feel like I should be saying something smart in scientific right now so let me quote the number one source for such words Wikipedia electroplating is a process that uses electric current to reduce dissolved metal cations so that they form a thin coherent metal coating on an electrode in this case that thin metal coating is rhodium to describe the process without using science it just looks really cool the electric current kind of fizzes off of the anode I love that juxtaposition between the column rhodium underneath and the fizzy current above [Music] after plating the yellow gold ring for 30 seconds or so I bring it out to reveal a white ring not actual white gold but a thin layer of rhodium which has been electroplated on the surface it's important to note that this rhodium plating will wear off it really depends on the ring bearer on how long the rhodium lasts sometimes people can stretch it for a few months or even a year for yellow gold rings a lot of times I'll go back and plate it again just to make the coating extra thick I'm now going to rhodium plate the white gold ring zoomed out a bit so you can see the whole process start with the electric cleaning bath then over to the distilled water or to the activator down to distilled water again I bring the terminal lead over electro cleaner and rhodium plating usually perform a bit better when they're heated up to around a hundred degrees or so I'm not showing it in this video but a lot of times I'll use a hot plate to heat up each beaker individually without touching the ring with my fingers I'll grab it with the tongs and I'll bring it over to the steamer this will remove any lingering rhodium when electroplating especially rhodium it's important to stay safe a big part of safety in this case has to do with air ventilation I have this solder peer machine which basically will filter the air and make sure that none of those vapors and fumes are reaching my lungs this gate open and closes to give it more power when I'm not rhodium plating I'll usually keep it closed on the other side I have this kind of snake-like hose that I can aim right down over my soldering that way when I'm soldering a ring closed I don't inhale any of the solder fumes and there we have it both the yellow gold ring and the white gold ring side-by-side can you tell which one is which obviously we know which one is which in this situation but it's really cool that they both look bright white one thing to note about rhodium plating however is it has a hard time getting down into the nooks and crannies of certain rings if it's just a plain band a lot of times you can't tell that it's been rhodium plated at all but if you look here deep down if i zoom in with my camera you can see little bits of yellow if you truly want your ring white gold I actually don't recommend rhodium plating it rather just having the ring custom-made in white gold using your diamonds and materials for the white gold ring you can see that things turned out a bit better there's no yellow spots at all things look bright white this is kind of like a refresh of the ring itself just check out the before and after here now let's see the before and after of the yellow gold ring before definitely yellow after it passes a white gold ring [Music] if you have any questions at all about rhodium plating electroplating or maybe turning a yellow gold ring white or a different material go ahead and let me know and I'll be happy to help thanks for watching [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Modern Goldsmith

Views: 332,385

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Id: OSa9zTJMCdw

Length: 10min 6sec (606 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 28 2020