Some of the most beautiful necklaces have delicate link chains. These fine chains are notorious for becoming tangled and broken, at which point a lot of people either throw the jewelry away or sell it back to a jeweler if the necklace is made of gold or silver. What you may not know is that these fine chains can be untangled and fixed. Here is how jewelers make jewelry repairs on such fine links in these necklaces.
The Flat Work Surface
If you have ever tried to loop a necklace over a flat surface, then you already know that the weight of the necklace itself often causes it to roll and twist. This is especially true of a fine chain necklace, which often makes it much more difficult to repair.
These necklaces have to remain perfectly flat and very still during the repair process, or the jeweler will not be able to replace and restore broken links, much less carefully un-knot the delicate links without breaking them. Because it is such challenging work, the work surface has to rise up to meet the jeweler's eyes at a comfortable level, requiring a large resting plate for the microscope or a flat adjustable science experiment plate that can be elevated to a comfortable height.
A Jeweler's Monocle or a Microscope
The most difficult aspect about repairing these tiny, fine links is that it is very hard to see them well with the naked eye. If you have ever wondered how these delicate chains were made in the first place, it is the same way in which they are repaired when broken. The jeweler involves a microscope or jeweler's monocle to get a really good look at the tiny chain links as the jeweler works on the necklace. Then he/she uses a set of ultra-fine tools to complete the repair or construction work.
The Ultra-Fine Repair Tools
These jeweler's tools are often the same ones used to repair Swiss-made watches or tiny clocks. There are tiny tweezers to hold links as the jeweler looks at the links and examines how they broke, and tiny pin-point awls that are frequently used to unravel knots in the fine link necklaces. There are also tiny jeweler's pinchers that aid the jeweler in gently closing the links that are partially open or closing replacement links that the jeweler has very carefully inserted into the necklace. All of this is done on a very flat surface to avoid any wiggling or movement of the rest of the chain.
If you have jewelry that's tangled or broken, it can be fixed. Just contact a local company that offers jewelry repairs.
Share15 August 2018
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