Rhodium plating of silver rings Q&A's

A. Hi Morteza. To reduce nickel allergies white bronze is widely used as a bright underlayer on jewelry in place of nickel. You can search the site for dozens of threads about white bronze plating, which goes under many trade names and traditional names. Alternately, palladium plating can be used.

Luck & Regards,

A. Rhodium and silver do not have green corrosion products.

A. I don't think it's necessary to nickel plate silver before the rhodium plating, but it is possible for there to be nickel plating on the silver before rhodium plating, right, Neil?

A. Good point Ted, yes that is a common practice, so then a green result is possible.

A. Without the barrier of nickel, cobalt, gold, etc, the silver will migrate right thru the cracks in the rhodium and show as a tarnish on top of the rhodium, not the first day but a few days later.

A. Hello Neil & Robert,

You both are right that silver will make Rh bath weaker after few days, but I've seen that in 925 silver jewelry there is plating of rhodium and they are not doing nickel undercoat, that silver jewelry is coming from Italy, China, many other places. That rhodium is like flash plating so I have tried to remove by buffing and if it is nickel then I can know after putting in 30% HCl acid it'll be like copper color.

A. Hi. One more point that Neil has brought up in other discussions which may be applicable for you is that you cannot chemically remove rhodium that is plated directly onto silver, but with a nickel underplate you at least have some shot at it by dissolving the nickel.

Regards,

A. Rhodium is a stressed and brittle "dried mudflat" plating, and quite thin. If, in fact, the particular item in question does include a layer of nickel plating, yes, I guess it could turn a finger green. Please see our FAQs which include a great presentation by Artisan Plating on the subject of rhodium plating. I think the better answer is there should be no nickel plating. Thanks.

A. Rhodium is a precious metal often ten times as costly as gold; the rhodium itself will not turn your finger green or any other color, Amber. But it is a thin and porous coating only a few millionths of an inch thick, and you haven't told us (perhaps you haven't been told yourself) what the ring is made of. If it's silver you should be okay. If not, and if it hasn't been claimed to be gold, it probably is copper and nickel and I think you may have a problem.

A. Hi M. Rhodium is a precious metal like platinum and gold and would not cause any such discoloration or irritation. I would suspect nickel; you can test for it.

Regards,

A. Hi Noorani. Even precious metal rings should not be worn in the water -- certainly not rhodium plated sterling silver rings.

Thanks for your vote of confidence in this site, but as of today Amazon offers a rating of 4 stars on that ring, based on 89 reviews by owners of it ... those reviews will certainly reveal more than our guesses based on a photograph :-)

Best of luck with it.

Regards,

Hi Melissa. No point in Neil Bell or myself answering because we've already said that rhodium is a precious metal that does not corrode like that, but agreed that there could be nickel plating between the silver base and the rhodium plating, and that could turn green. I think it's obvious that that's a bad idea though.

Regards,

A. Hi Helen. Right ... neither silver nor rhodium ought to turn green. But silver can turn black ... and the reason for the rhodium plating is to deter that.

Regards,

A. Hi Amir. I don't know if "Level alloy" has any special meaning to you or others, but it doesn't anything to me. I am not familiar with the jewelry trade so "the secret of silver plating in Thailand" means nothing to be either :-)

Are you implying that rhodium plated silver jewelry from Thailand is special in some way -- much higher quality than jewelry from anywhere else? much less expensive than jewelry from anywhere else?

Please introduce yourself and your situation and what motivates your question because I am not able to read between the lines to feel that I actually understand your question.

In addition to what you can read on this page, a youtube video from Stuller asserts that silver rings are first nickel plated or, to avoid nickel allergy they are palladium plated, and then rhodium plated ...

Regards,