A beginner’s guide to plating
By Sharon Elaine Thompson
When most consumers think of plating, they associate it with costume or fashion jewelry. Yet many fine jewelers and manufacturers use plating daily—from chain manufacturers looking to match the color of the findings they buy in bulk to their chains to bench jewelers wanting to even out the color of a rose gold piece brought in for repair. And then there’s the most common type of plating in the industry—rhodium plating used to cover the yellowish cast of white gold jewelry.