Your new costume jewellery broke after having only worn it a few times? One of the rhinestones has fallen off or the connection between pendant and necklace has loosened? With a small amount of adhesive, these things are easily fixed. I will show you how!
All that glitters is not gold …
Costume jewellery is not exactly known for its longevity, as the fake bling is not made of precious metals like gold, silver or platinum, but of copper, brass or other metal alloys.
In addition, the finish is of pretty poor quality quite often. Of course, costume jewellery is often sold at really cheap prices – so you can’t expect excellent quality. But it looks pretty and you sometimes have an emotional attachment to certain pieces, so it would be a shame to throw them out.
Bonding delicate necklaces – with the help of a dosing tip
That’s what my colleague Ekaterina thought, too, so she asked me to fix her broken necklace, which she had brought home as a holiday souvenir. The connecting piece between the necklace and the pendant had loosened due to low-quality adhesive bonding by the manufacturer.
As I have a passion for model trains, I am used to working with such delicate pieces. So I realised straight away that for this repair, I would need a dosing tip. This enables the precise, accurate and economical use of adhesives.
For the adhesive bond, I went for our WEICON Contact VA 1403. The highly viscous cyanoacrylate adhesive has a slightly longer curing time, but is ideal for visually appealing repair works, as it shows little blooming. That means there are no unpleasant adhesive residues leaking out on the sides after bonding. And with jewellery, looks definitely outdo curing time, don’t they?
The dosing tip can be easily pushed onto the top. After applying a small amount of the adhesive to the pendant as well as to the connecting piece, I could join both pieces with a little dexterity and tweezers. After 24 hours, the adhesive was fully cured and Ekaterina could wear the pretty piece again.
Speaking of jewellery: In another article, we’ll show you how to create pretty small jewellery works with one of our epoxy adhesives.
Bonding jewellery: In short
- Costume jewellery pieces do not need to be treated as single-use products, despite their often poor quality.
- In order to bond delicate jewellery items, you not only need a steady hand, but also a dosing tip, which ensures precise and accurate bonding.
- 3. For jewellery, an adhesive bond that looks good is very important. That is why you should only use adhesives that show little to no blooming like our WEICON Contact VA 1403, for example.
