Cleaning and polishing Platinum

Platinum is the King of precious metals.

Platinum is denser than gold. Does not have a memory, so claws pushed over a gem stone will stay where they are put. It is difficult to polish, but once polished it will retain its polish. Like silver, platinum is naturally white and does not require rhodium plating. It reacts to virtually nothing, so it will never oxidize. Almost perfect!

But what a pain to work with. Tools wear away quickly. It is difficult to polish. It has such a high melting point that normal materials can’t be used with it. Solders are almost non-existent. But what a metal!

Cleaning and polishing Platinum the jewellery workshop.

Platinum is the most difficult metal to finish. The advent of micro polishing abrasives has made polishing platinum a bit easier. But not by much.

The surface of a platinum piece of jewellery must finished to an almost perfect state before any mechanical polishing is commenced. The grit sizes of the polishing compounds become infinitesimally small.

Problems arise from the densities of the metals used to solder platinum. This means that solder joins will wear away more quickly than the host metal while polishing. This results in gouging.

Cleaning platinum at home

Polishing platinum at home will be almost impossible. At best using a Sunshine Yellow polishing cloth followed by a Sunshine Blue cloth will result in a slightly shinier piece of jewellery.

But cleaning with an ultrasonic cleaner using LilyJewels SparkleClean will enhance Diamond set jewellery significantly.

Platinum jewellery must almost always be refinished by a professional jeweller.

I recommend refinishing once a year.