I was wondering if anyone out there could help me out of a jam.
I made these earrings with black opal doublets and set them in
22k bezels. Everything went fine, I sold them last week.
Today, the customer brought them back and said after she wore
them for the first time she noticed one of the stones was
cracked. I don’t know how it happened, but I’ve got to make it
right somehow.
I’ve heard of a way you can repair opals. Has anyone ever done
this? The cracks appear as white lines, but the surface isn’t
marred at all. Can this be done without removing the stone? Is
a product called “opticon” good for this? How does it work? Does
anyone have a service that I can send the earring to be
repaired? I’d appreciate the feedback, the customer is really
coming unglued!
Thank You!
Wendy Newman
ggraphix@msn.com
Wendy No guarantee but my mentor is deep into opals. I don’t feel
right about putting his phone number on the air. He is in San
Diego. Any ideas?
Bill
Ginkgo Designs
@WILLIAM_I_EISENBERG
Sounds like your opal coming unglued is what’s causing your
client to “unglue” .
One old lapidarist trick is to correctly mix a water-clear
epoxy, (like epoxy 30-30) then mix that 50/50 with acetone. The
acetone thins down the epoxy considerably and gives it a
viscosity that will aloow it to capillary into most any crack
when painted on the surface. In rather short order the acetone
will evaporate, leaving the mixed epoxy in the crack and sealing
it.
To further the process, I’ve mixed a substantial quantity of the
epoxy/acetone mixture and then vacuumed it to really suck the
stuff deep into a stone… If you do that you will have a mess
to clean up on the surface but that can be accomplished with
q-tip and acetone when everything had dried
sufficiently…perhaps a day and a half or so.
Good luck.
G
One old lapidarist trick is to correctly mix a water-clear
epoxy, (like epoxy 30-30) then mix that 50/50 with acetone.
The acetone thins down the epoxy considerably and gives it a
viscosity that will aloow it to capillary into most any crack
when painted on the surface.
Gary, Thanks for your reply. I ended up using that “opticon” and
it worked really well for the hairline fractures, but I had
these other opal doublets that had chipped and was looking for
something that would fill the chips and take a good polish. I
just got some epoxy 300. Would that work? Thanks
Wendy Newman