Q&A: Rhodium plating silver rings & jewelry

A. Hi Ankit. The usual answer to nickel-free is "white bronze". It's not copper color, it's nickel color -- but it contains a lot of copper. Do you have any information on why this plating is required to be copper-free, especially when the ring itself is not? That could be an interesting discussion point.

Reflectivity is partially a question of the type of metal, but it's also an issue of surface topography. Maybe the ring could be better polished before the silver plating, and plated with a heavier layer of silver to insure it is not porous.

Luck & Regards,

A. Rhodium plated silver is the best type of silver to buy on the market cause it will never tarnish, looks better than real white gold, and a tenth of the price.

A. The basic issue, Jean, is that silver tarnishes. Although some people like that natural look, many don't, and it can be hard to offer & sell tarnished jewelry at your jewelry counter.

So we look for ways to delay or prevent that tarnishing and one of several ways to do it is to plate a very thin layer of rhodium on top of the silver. Rhodium is a precious white metal that doesn't tarnish and is never significantly less expensive than gold and sometimes 10x as costly as gold. So there is nothing cheap or duplicitous about rhodium plating silver jewelry, and your customers should be able to understand the situation easily.

The difficult customers would be the ones that demand a natural silver that will readily tarnish, but they will probably want it to be shiny and untarnished when they buy it! This demands either careful protection with anti-tarnish packaging and/or constant polishing until you sell it :-)

A. I have read all the comments, and haven't seen a message posted by a manufacturer. I am a manufacturer of high end silver jewelry from Thailand, exporting mainly to European countries. So I would like to share manufacturer's perspective.

As you guys said, rhodium is much more expensive than silver plating. But it's worth it if your market is high end. Because apart from the fact that silver plating can be tarnished easier, it also can be oxidized easier (look not shiny and gone black).
Rhodium, if proper plating is applied, will be more shiny and durable for a long time.
For the point that rhodium is a little bit blacker than silver plated, in my opinion, I think it looks like white gold jewelry, because white gold jewelry is also plated with rhodium. My company does high end product and the design is in line with gold jewelry, so all products are rhodium plated.

For the point that when they said silver plated, is the material is silver or just plated with silver? Looking on the back side, if it is stamped 925, it is made of silver.

A. Natural silver, while requiring a little effort to keep it's shine is a much nicer finish than the others suggested.

A. Sorry, Khin, I'm not in the jewelry industry and would not know the relative popularity ... but rhodium plating isn't the only anti-tarnish treatment for silver either.

Regards,

A. Hi Guarav. No, it is not necessary ... if we are working from the same assumptions. A common use of rhodium on silver is not to give silver a permanent rhodium look, but as a temporary anti-tarnish treatment, so that it can be put in a showcase for display and sale without constant re-polishing.

If you are selling it as special non-tarnishing silver, however, then you probably would need the longevity and freedom from porosity of nickel (or white bronze) plating, and/or high purity silver plating under the thin and porous rhodium plating. That's my understanding.

Regards,

A. Hi Becky. There are a dozen reasons for various colors and 101 for misunderstandings. Unless we understood thoroughly what the jeweler did and said he did it's unfortunately very difficult to form any opinions.

Sometimes a heavy layer of rhodium is plated over a layer of nickel or white bronze to give that scintillating look of white gold engagement rings; Kulthida P says his company offers that kind of high end costume jewelry. Other times a very thin and virtually transparent layer of rhodium is applied just to deter tarnish, leaving the soft color of silver. Then too, most jewelry shops are not high end multi-million dollar instrument controlled electroplating factories; often they're virtually plating out of a tea cup with a $400 plating setup and contaminated solutions and that causes discoloration.

Maybe try another jeweler and carefully explain that you want your jewelry to look like his white gold engagement rings, and get the agreement that he can or can't do that before you commit. Good luck.

Regards,

A. Hi Pat. Sterling is usually stamped "925" or "sterling", but so what? Silver is only a semi-precious metal and the intrinsic value of a small silver item like a ring isn't much anyway; the important thing is how it looks to you and how durable it is. So don't worry, be happy :-)

Regards,

A. Hi Colleen. As I've said earlier in this thread, I could be wrong because I'm not a jeweler and all I know about this subject is just from handling hundreds of these Q&A's. But let's review my understanding, and I hope that you or someone will correct me if I'm wrong ...

Some people love the soft look of silver, even though silver quickly tarnishes. But even if customers like that look, and even if they completely understand that silver tarnishes and are content to deal with it, they may not want to buy brand new tarnished silver, and jewelers may not want to try to sell it to them, because it looks dirty or used instead of new. For this application, rhodium is sometimes applied in a very thin layer (yes, about 0.05 microns) to forestall tarnish through the display & sales period (there are other alternatives to achieve the same end, including preservatives and organic or inorganic clearcoats).

But other people love the scintillating bling-y look , and they want the bling to last, not to fade as soon as they buy it. This group doesn't want their silver to look soft and to tarnish, they want it to flash like rhodium. It seems that you are selling to this second group. For this group you certainly need a significantly thicker layer of rhodium and you may need an underlayer of nickel or white bronze before the rhodium. The site's supporting advertiser Metal Arts Specialties has a good FAQ on rhodium plating at https://artisanplating.com/electroplating-faqs/rhodium-plating/

Luck and Regards,

Hi Colleen. Yes, cleaning is essential. The jeweler's pickle will remove the oxides and sulfides, but not oils, greases, and fingerprints. In production, the usual cleaning is by immersion into strong hot alkaline solutions. But for low volume custom work the pieces can instead be scrubbed with a tampico brush and a solution of fine powdered pumice & detergent. The sequence is clean, rinse, pickle, rinse, plate.

But if you think that you as a customer can gather information on the internet to instruct an inexperienced plater you will be disappointed. The plating shop needs to be experienced, and absolutely must not need to be told how to clean parts. Please consider sending a sample lot to one of the site's supporting advertisers, listed below, who are experienced jewelry platers. You probably will not be able to sell your stuff in Europe if you use nickel plating; so white bronze or palladium as an underlayer, or a heavy rhodium plating by an experienced shop could be a better idea.

I definitely hesitate to say that you can't do it yourself -- many jewelers do it themselves. Although general electroplating can be quite difficult because of the often complicated pretreatments required, but if you already have well prepared and polished silver charms and just need to scrub, pickle, and rhodium plate them, I think it's doable with patience and dedication. Good luck.

Regards,

A. Hi Nancy. If they were bright and shiny and didn't tarnish they probably had rhodium plating on them. Many jewelers can polish/buff it back to a shine and rhodium plate it. Good luck.

Regards,

A. There is Argentium Silver which resists tarnishing but you have to be careful when working with it because if you touch it before it has cooled down from heating it with your torch it will crack. Also Pure silver can be work hardened and it will not tarnish. As for the items coated with Rhodium, this was very popular in the 50s and 60s, especially chains and charm bracelets. Women wanted the look of Platinum without the high price tag. Whoever said that lobsterclaw clasps were magnetic, that was incorrect because they can use other metals for the spring that are zinc based, hence not magnetic. Then we come to jewelry coming from China marked 925, well most of it is copper with silver plating. Hopefully they will start enforcing the same purity standards we have to meet when stamping our handmade custom pieces.

A. Hi Penny. If it was 92.5% silver before rhodium plating, it will be 92.5% silver after rhodium plating. I can't see see any confusion, legal, or ethical issue.

Luck & Regards,


Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

A. Hi Vickie. I don't know if "average cost" has much bearing for sterling silver rings, because re-plating can cost more than a new sterling silver ring, but let's say $40.

A good quality ring ought to look good for a reasonable life because these metals are generally more or less the same silvery color, whereas if there were a yellow metal (brass, gold, copper) involved, the contrast would be much more obvious. But who you bought the ring from is a much better quality guide than any sales pap :-)

Regards,