A CONVERSATION WITH PLATINUM JEWELER DARREL BENOIT
Q: When did you first start working with platinum?
A: I was with Larry Williams Jewelers in Santa Rosa. It was about the tenth item given to me in my job box. It was a man’s pinkie gypsy mount (a center stone set in the middle of a dome and setting is bezeled) and my job was to polish the platinum mounting around that stone. From that moment I grew to respect the versatile qualities of platinum and always enjoy working with this precious metal.
Q: How did you learn the platinum trade?
A: An 82 year old Romanian master platinumsmith, “Papa” Polinski, taught me the trade while I was working at Bagley and Hotchkiss. He had an old-world philosophy about platinum I really enjoyed experiencing the metal from that standpoint.
Q: Why do you like working with platinum?
A: It’s a noble metal so it’s not very forgiving if you are not very precise with your joints, unless you go to fusion. It’s an extremely high temperature metal that does not oxidize, which means you weld it as opposed to solder it.
Q: What is the most difficult aspect of working with platinum?
A: Platinum does not lend itself to casting. The design specs are extremely critical and the tolerances are very tight. The design itself needs to be pitched at an angle inside the flask in order to maximize the thrust potential due to its high melting temperature.
Q: What are the characteristics of platinum?
A: People think that platinum is hard but platinum is actually dense. You can work platinum and it will stick to itself like lead does. However, where lead is very soft and low melting temperatures are used, platinum is on the other end of the spectrum. Actually 18K white gold is harder and more brittle than platinum.
Q: What advice do you have for jewelers wanting to work platinum?
A: Cleanliness is of the utmost importance. You’ll spend three times the energy getting a high luster on a platinum piece than on a silver or gold piece.
Q: Why choose platinum over gold?
Because the integrity of the material. Platinum is eternal.
Q: What would you like people to know about platinum?
A: Because platinum is dense, it can “smoosh” over the top of a diamond setting. It wears incredibly well and lasts a long time, but it can encroach the surface of the stones themselves.
Q: What are your future plans with platinum?
A: I would like to sculpt fractals with platinum (fractals are geometric patterns that are repeated at very small scales where the smaller is to the greater as the greater is to the whole).
