I had the incredible opportunity to attend a week-long platinum fabrication course at New Approach School for Jewelers in Arrington, TN. As many of you are aware, I work primarily in gold. I love yellow gold in particular. I love how it looks and it’s working characteristics. If you ask me for something in silver, I’ll try to talk you into white gold. But now I’ll probably try to talk you into platinum instead!

I learned so much over the week that it’s hard to know how to start in telling you all I learned. I think I’ll start with why platinum is such a great choice for fine jewelry, and then I’ll nerd out a little on the actual fabrication techniques. Grab your eye protection! Just kidding!

Reasons I Think Platinum is a Great Choice

1. Platinum is 95% pure and 5% alloy.

That is a really high purity, especially compared to our typical 14k gold which is 58% pure gold and 42% other alloys (like copper and silver). If you’ve ever experience an allergy to a metal, you’ll probably be safe with platinum. Platinum is typically alloyed with ruthenium.

2. Platinum doesn’t tarnish.

Do you hate how your sterling silver jewelry turns black and how your white gold jewelry gets dull or even kind of yellow? Do you hate having to get your white gold jewelry re-rhodium plated to keep it shiny and bright white? Since platinum is so pure, it doesn’t oxidize (aka tarnish)! It will stay shiny and beautiful.

3. Platinum doesn’t have much metal memory.

What the heck is metal memory, you ask? Have you ever bent metal and then it spring back? That’s memory. White gold has a lot of metal memory, so it takes a lot more force to move prongs. This makes setting fragile stones like emeralds difficult (and terrifying). If you’ve ever had a prong that’s slightly lifted up from the stone, it snags on everything. With platinum, the prongs stay where you put them! There isn’t any recoil, so there’s less chance of that annoying snagging.

There are many more reasons why platinum is such a great metal, but let’s get into the fun stuff now!

Day 1 of class we learned how to melt and reclaim platinum, take the melted ingot and draw it into wire, and how to make and solder jump rings closed. When melting platinum, special eye protection is needed. Platinum melts at a whopping 3,215 degrees Fahrenheit! It glows such a bright white that it can damage unprotected eyes. It’s like looking at the sun.

When heating platinum, it turns a range of colors from pumpkin orange (ok to look at without eye protection) to yellow to bright white. My instructor, Blaine Lewis,  said the bright white makes it look like an angel! I also learned that platinum is a terrible conductor of heat. This means that the heat stays very localized. I was shocked when Blaine held a ring in his fingers while fusing the metal together (pictured right)!! After we made and soldered the jump rings closed, we cut and filed notches into each ring where prongs will eventually be soldered.

We repeated that process to solder another curved wire onto the other side. Day 2 ended with prepping two more wires to be soldered in place in the morning! It doesn’t sound like a full day of work, but believe me – it was!

Day 3 we continued to fit and solder wires. Again, this sounds quick and easy, but it’s not! Where the wires intersect, one wire has to be cut in precisely the right spot, then filed away just enough for the other wire to fit into the gap perfectly. There was a lot of super glue involved with getting the wires fitted, held in place, and soldered. I might have glued the platinum to my fingers multiple times today…but we won’t talk about that!

Day 4 we cut and fit the last of the wires. During all of the cutting, fitting, and soldering, little micro-tweaks were made to make sure everything was aligned perfectly and completely symmetrical. Once we were completely happy with the trellis head, it went into the magnetic tumbler to give it a nice shiny finish. After that, we fit and soldered a platinum shank onto the head to complete the ring. The shank was cast rather than hand fabricated, so we learned about the proper grits of sandpaper to use and the different polishing compounds to give the shank a mirror-like finish.

Day 5 we finished sanding and polishing. One of the instructors used a really cool laser engraving machine to engrave the PLAT 950 stamp on the inside of the ring for me. And with that, my ring is ready! I now just have to decide a couple of things.

1. Will I keep this beauty for myself or sell it? 2. What stones do I want to set in it?

Since it didn’t take a full day to polish and engrave the ring, each person in the class had the opportunity to melt platinum scrap down into an ingot. It was much different than melting gold, so I’m glad I got to try it for myself! We also practiced fusing platinum together. This technique will be useful when sizing rings down.

Overall, I give this class 10 out of 5 stars.

It was an amazing experience, and I feel well prepared and very confident in working with platinum. If you need your platinum ring sized or want a new piece fabricated, bring it on!