Amber pendant It is no secret that natural amber fades over time, loses its shine, its surface can become covered with craquelure, add to this the fragility of the material itself, storage errors - and sooner or later the need for repair will arise for almost any product.
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One cannot come across any number of “recipes” for renovation and repair, gleaned, among other things, from the Internet. The home craftsman uses sunflower oil, a boiling solution of toilet soap, toothpaste, alcohol-containing liquids, acetone, soda, GOI paste, all kinds of varnishes and adhesives from “Moment” to “BF”.
Unfortunately, all of the above not only does not help restore the solar stone to its original appearance, moreover, the results lead either to the complete loss of the product, or to the need to carry out restoration rather than repair work. And it doesn’t matter what type of amber is in front of you: classic Baltic, unique blue amber or extraordinary birmite.
But what if you still want to “refresh” your grandmother’s favorite beads or a scratched bracelet? What can be done and what absolutely cannot be done?
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First, you need to find out if it is amber. Often products from the 70s and 80s - cigarette holders, brooches, large turned beads, massive bracelets - turn out to be imitation plastic. The surest method is to test their ability to electrify, which gave amber the name “electrum”. This can be done by intensively rubbing the product with a woolen cloth. If after this procedure the stone begins to attract small pieces of paper and specks, proceed to the next stage.
Amber cleaning
A piece of amber
You can simply and safely clean amber using a dry brush with elastic bristles, or a woolen cloth or suede, similar to cleaning delicate pearls. It is advisable not to wash amber products, especially old ones, especially with soap or other cleaning agents, such as “fairies”. Surfactants can negatively affect the structure of the stone, and it will become covered with a whitish coating, which can only be removed by grinding.
How to glue a “silver” spoon?
Apparently from cupronickel. Planned for food purposes. Soldering PIC seems to be not durable and harmful. Specialist. I didn't use solders. I'm thinking of gluing it with epoxy (Poxypol)?
take it to a jeweler and have him solder it
I don't know this Poxypol. I'm thinking about copper-phosphorus solder » >
If you are thinking about copper-phosphorus solder, then it is possible to melt refractory solder. Therefore, I advise you to use silver solder instead of copper-phosphate, if this is not possible, then solder POS90.
2Kolya-Mba 2Yuber, for me this topic is not a problem, but a subject of interest. You can simply throw away the spoon and buy a new one. And to advise “hire a specialist.” You can do it on any issue at all.
2Vidis has not dealt with refractory solders, but I really want to. There is a gas Dremel, I thought to them. Copper-phosph. is in stock and costs 48 rubles/bar. Silver solder is probably more expensive. What do they solder on? Well, is Poxypol a crapshoot? Although it is written that it is “strong as metal.” ) and only 10 minutes of time
So we need to warn you right away. Well, go ahead and experiment.
bambr+ wrote: Silver solder is probably more expensive.
the same as a copper-phosphorus-gas-flame burner
bambr+ wrote: Well, is Poxypol a crapshoot?
Yeah, especially for food purposes, I wouldn’t use it. As I already said, solder POS90 or pure tin (it’s fragile compared to POS90)
2Hubert go ahead, go ahead - but how to do it?
Vidis wrote: solder POS90 or pure tin
Well, tin is on sale, but at 90? with lead after all
Vidis wrote: especially since I wouldn’t use it for food purposes
Everything is known about lead. What can you say about epoxy?
PS: What would your vaunted jeweler use to solder? I would kill such advisers
bambr+ wrote: What can you say about epoxy?
and what can we say about it, epoxy-phenols and that says it all..
bambr+ wrote: and the village is 90? with lead after all
Damn, honestly, I'm tired of repeating this. There have already been five or more threads like this in which I talked about this.
Amber polishing
You can, surprisingly, remove small scratches and defects by gently rubbing the amber on a sheet of clean coated paper, because it acts as a soft abrasive, smoothing out unevenness and roughness of the surface. And, of course, polishing with a dry wool or suede cloth (with the addition of soap or paraffin) is the safest recommendation. If this does not help, then mechanical processing is required, which can be done in a jewelry workshop.
It should be taken into account that amber can be tinted or colored, i.e. painted. Cognac, red, bright orange, blue or green shades of amber are usually obtained after thermal or chemical treatment. Polishing and grinding such amber at home is not safe for the product, because the color of the stone is changed only on the surface, and if you remove the tinted layer, the product will look like a small leopard in a frame, in other words, it will be covered with spots.
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The best glue for jewelry: how to glue accessories
Everyone knows that the best means in the world for gluing two things together is blue electrical tape, and if these things cannot be glued together, then there is simply not enough electrical tape.
This, in principle, could be the end of this post.
But let’s still try to figure out what can replace this best remedy in the world.
We have already talked about what kind of glue you can use to glue glass to glass so that it does not fall off. Today we’ll talk about one of the most pressing problems for craftsmen involved in jewelry: how to glue metal fittings to a pendant, earrings or cabochon for a ring.
It is no secret that during wearing, products are subjected to various kinds of mechanical and physical influences. It can be severe cold or hellish heat; the decoration is affected by the sun's rays, sweat, water, sebum, etc. Therefore, very often jewelry that at first glance “sits” like stone and is simply impossible to break. break. And as a result, a dissatisfied client comes to the master.
How to avoid unnecessary headaches? How to glue the fittings so that they cannot be torn off?
Physicists say that the best effect is achieved by high-molecular synthesis in a vacuum under a pressure of 20,000 mPa. (Just kidding - I don’t even know what it is).
At first, many craftsmen (including us) try to glue fittings using household glue. As a rule, this is the Heinkel family of adhesives: Moment, MomentCrystal, SuperMoment, MomentGel, Secunda, SecundaGel, etc.
The best quality of all of the above is provided by MomentGel. But remember that this is a good household glue. The quality of the connection is generally good, but it is better not to use it for professional use. All “Moments” are afraid of exposure to sweat, and really dislike exposure to sunlight and cold. Under sudden short-term loads, such as a fall, the connection breaks. In the end, after suffering for a couple of months, we abandoned this glue.
The next glue is Cosmofen. It is very similar to Moment glue (it contains the same cyanoacrylate), but thanks to the additives it holds better. Many jewelers use this glue for gluing rhinestones, cabochons, stone plates, etc. to the metal base.
Our workshop also tried to use it, the results were generally satisfactory, but this glue is characterized by the same “sores” as all “Moments”. Cosmofen is not very expensive and overall the price-quality ratio is quite good.
But, you know, the best is the enemy of the good. The search continued. The next glue, which stands head and shoulders above those just described, is UHU Creativ two-component epoxy adhesive. It is very similar to the family of epoxy resins and adhesives, but, again thanks to additives, it does its job much better. He is practically “unkillable”.
It is almost impossible to tear off a joint glued together with a “hooks” (as we call it) - sometimes the metal breaks or a piece of glass comes off. In our city, this glue could only be bought in hobby shops - at a price that was not always adequate (the price of this glue on the Internet is about half as low), but recently it has disappeared from sale.
Faced with the fact that it was impossible to buy a “ear” in our city, and we no longer wanted to use “Moment” or “Cosmofen”, we again went in search of the best glue.
We searched for a long time. A very long time. And one day in one of the videos on YouTube we found a mention of professional glue, which is used by most foreign jewelry manufacturers. Found and ordered on eBay.
This is the so-called “industrial” or industrial glue, which is packaged in small containers and sold in 30 ml tubes. Its cost, of course, is hellish - with delivery it comes out to about 1,200 rubles. It glues almost everything: leather, metal, glass, porcelain, ceramics, polymer clay, alloys, etc. After we switched to this glue, all the problems with something coming off disappeared.
On eBay you can often find Chinese counterfeits of this glue. A fake is sold, as a rule, not in a blister; the tube differs in color and looks like this:
This fake costs exactly twice as much - 550 rubles. Sometimes, in order to avoid prosecution in court, the cunning Chinese call the glue not E6000, but, for example, E600 or B6000.
Out of inexperience, we bought such fakes two years ago. The first time, it glued a 100% fake, only without the American flag on the blister, disgustingly, even worse than Moment. But the second time we took B6000 - it stuck very well (about the level of UHU Creativ), but we didn’t take any risks, and it’s just lying around in the box.
That’s probably all I wanted to tell you about adhesives for jewelry today; I revealed almost all of our secrets. Although high molecular weight synthesis needs to be thought about
