Turning yellow gold into white gold - do jewelers do this much?

Factual Questions
1

For Christmas, my parents gave me a very well-intentioned gift: a ring, compromised of the “diamond” from my grandmother’s engagment ring and a brand-new yellow-gold setting. (In the process, they learned that the stone is actually not a diamond - unsurprising given that my grandparents married at the height of the Depression and my grandfather was rather poor.) Anyway, it’s a great sentiment and something I’m glad to have. But.

  1. With the exception of a small ring I wore for about a year in college, I have never worn a ring.

  2. I really don’t like the setting my parents had made.

  3. I really, really don’t like yellow gold. I’m very fair-skinned and it looks lousy on me.

So I’m thinking of transforming this into…something else, preferably of white gold. Would an ordinary jeweler’s shop be able to add the appropriate metals and transform the yellow gold into white? Or is that generally not something they do? Would the labor cost be absurdly expensive? I realize the overall cost could differ depending on whether the alloy uses nickel or palladium, but I figure I can adjust for that.

Any thoughts greatly appreciated.

2

You will either need to:

  1. reset the stones in a new, white gold setting and scrap the old setting or

  2. plate the old setting in palladium, which will make it look like white gold but will wear off and need to be redone occiasionally.

I recommend #1 since you don’t like the setting. A simple band setting starts at about $100.

Melting down the yellow gold and trying to make it whiter and then re-casting would be cost-prohibitive and probably no one would even agree to do it.

3

Gaudere is right. A bit more info: White gold is an alloy of gold and one of the platinum group metals (platinum, palladium, nickel, and/or zinc), which requires melting the metals together.

4

Brainfart correction: Zinc is not in the platinum group. It is, however, a common alloy for creation of white gold. Additionally, zinc-based white gold alloys are plated with rhodium to add shine and lustre. You probably didn’t need to know this, except to confirm that your request isn’t going to be easy.

5

Am I the only person who thinks of that parody of the Beverly Hillbillies theme song whenever “white gold” is mentioned? Probably.

6

Probably your best bet is to go back to the jeweler they got the setting from and see if s/he will do a swap/credit for a setting you like: a pendant, ring, etc. in white gold. No one else will give you more than scrap value for it, I daresay, but the one who just sold it may be willing to deal.

7

What is the “diamond” made of?

8

About the stone - not sure what it is - it seemed not in the best taste to ask my parents too much about that on Christmas morning, and I figure a jeweler can always tell me more!

Thanks for the explanation, everyone. I should’ve remembered that the setting is already an alloy, and undoing one alloy to create another is unlikely to be worth while.

I suspect that what I’ll do is just by an inexpensive chain and wear this ring around my neck (close to my heart, but away from view) for a while, and when a decent interval has past, I’ll melt the setting down and do something else with the stone.

9

I have a ring that was passed down as well from the same time frame. It is a white sapphire. I do some sand casting and things of that nature and is much less expensive to have a new white gold setting purchased and trade in (sell) the current setting.

10

What happened to the original setting? I’d think that would have more sentimental value than a fake diamond by itself. Can you diplomatically obtain it and use that instead?