Repair or Remake?

February 13th 2009

The chain after restoration.

Recently Kathryn from Mallala in South Australia asked me to repair her necklace that she had purchased second hand.

Pictured to the right is Kathryn`s remade necklace. I did not repair it because it would have been more expensive than to remake it and probably required more repairs later. Basically we would have been repairing it for years to come and she would have always had the risk of losing it.

Using the existing gold I added in 20% more and then started to remake the links. Kathryn`s chain is made of 3 different types of links. In this photo of the spirally shaped links you can see how much of the old links, pictured in the front, have worn away compared to the new links at the back.

The oval shaped links also had a similar state of wear as you can see from this photo. The rectangular links however I did not need to totally remake, only replace the end sections.

The links on the Fob were also replaced and the hollow catch taken apart, reinforced and repaired. The end result is that now Kathryn has a new piece of jewellery that is her old piece as well.