Hello my name is Rael and I am a jewelry designer based out of Denver
Colorado. Today I'm going to be showing you how to use at the Jewel Master Gold
Plating kit. It's actually a remarkably simple process for stainless
steel, which is the metal that I'll be demonstrating today, it requires
three chemicals you have a cleaner then you have an activating solution and then
whatever finish you'd like to plate with. In this case is going to be 24 karat
bright gold. I am now going to have my videographer come around the corner, so
you can get a direct perspective of what this process was like. Before I begin I'm
going to put on safety goggles this is highly important and also a respirator
mask respirator mask.
This little contraption is a ring hook and what it does is it allows me to
suspend the different pieces of jewelry hang it on the bus bar and dip it into
the solution. So I'm going to plate two different pairs of earrings. You can see
this made out of stainless steel. Thread them onto the hooks.
And I've already had my device turned on, so to begin with the first solution you
want to have the voltage set to seven volts and then you simply move with the
bus bars into position, and thread it on. And I'll let this sit here for about a minute
maybe a minute and ten seconds. So you can see that there's light gassing happening
which unless you know that's working and then the voltage will automatically drop
depending on how many pieces you have being plated. So it hangs out here for
about I don't know another 45 seconds. I like to give it a little swish just make
sure that I that it gets clean.
At times what I'll do is I'll use a chopstick to take it out and then dip it
into a beaker of water and this isn't tap water, this is actually purified water
but you can pick up at different drugstores or supermarkets. And so this
allows me to switch it around get into the cleaner solution off of it and then
I'll actually dunk it into a second beaker of purified water just to make
sure there's no residue on there.
Next is the activating agent in this case, TriVal, so again you keep it at 7 volts
and this is a much shorter process you let this sit in the TriVal for
between 10 and 15 seconds
and with this I actually like to rotate the pieces to make sure both sides get
an even plating.
so after 10 to 15 seconds it comes along. And then again into its own beaker of
purified water. Before I dip it into the gold you want to turn the voltage down,
so the range for plating with gold is going to be between 2 point 5 and 3
volts so anywhere around 2.75 is ideal and because the voltage drops once I put
the pieces in I over shoot I by about a full volt.
So as I put the pieces in you notice that drops down to about two and a half and I'm going
to adjust this see how close I can go to 2.75. The machine is very sensitive so
slight touches all is required I think I'm going to leave it at 2.35 it gets 2.73 if
it goes a little bit higher there's a chance of burning. And so what happens
here is a longer you leave your pieces in the gold the thicker the gold will be.
I typically plate between a minute in a minute and a half and that yields about
a quarter of a micron, a little bit thicker. It's not it's common that the
water or that the gold solution remains flat and won't get any gaseum if you did
with the first two, so it's just still and about halfway through the process
again I like to rotate, so I'll take this off and flip it around.
If you'll notice the temperature right now is just about a hundred degrees and for
the gold you want it to be between 95 and 100 and so what I will do is I will
preheat the gold on the oven in a pot of water I don't let the water boil and it
takes about 7 to 10 minutes to get from room temperature up to between 95 and
100. So I think that's nice and cooked. We'll take these off and give a bit of a rinse. You see here I now have two pairs of gold-plated earrings. It's very simple
and very easy. And that, my friends, is how you use the Jewel Master Gold Plating kit.