Hi everybody,
I’ve got a pearl restringing/knotting problem I’ve never encountered
before and am thinking I may have to try something totally unorthodox
to solve it… but thought I’d run it by others more experienced than
I before proceeding.
The strand is graduated… from predominantly 4mm pearls to an 8mm
center pearl. My initial impression when they were sent to me for
restringing was that they were real. However, upon cleaning and then
cutting them apart, I discovered otherwise. Still… a nice surface
treatment. Probably about 50 - 60 years old, and they came to me in
their original box (anyone recognize the name Crosby?? the box says
"Styled by Crosby" on the inside, but I can find nothing on the
company).
The problem is the three to five center pearls (the center three are
the worst) have holes too large to accept the silk thread size
appropriate for the smaller beads. My second attempt at knotting the
strand was with size E Gudebrod silk (and D looked better with the
4mm pearls)… and even double knotting (shudder) between these five
center pearls was not enough to keep the knots from slipping into
the holes with even a minor attempt at tightening them.
When I encounter this problem with stone or glass beads, I just plug
the holes with seed beads, liquid silver or those little plastic
spacers that come on some stone bead strands. Unfortunately, the
holes are just small enough not to accommodate any of these.
At this point, I’m thinking of something a whole lot less
conventional, like plugging the larger holes with a substance rather
than a smaller bead. The substance that might work best is a
two-part mold compound. The advantage to this stuff is that it dries
quickly, yet doesn’t harden like a rock, but rather like a soft
eraser… and between poking some into a bead hole and its drying, a
needle could be inserted into its center to allow for the silk thread
to pass through once it dries. And once it’s dried, it’s not water
soluble … so if the customer were to swish her strand around in
some pearl cleaner down the road, the stuff inside the pearls
wouldn’t “melt”. I think this trick would also allow the silk to be
removed for restringing again when required in the future. Two
issues: (1) All I have on hand at the moment is a two-part mold
substance that’s purple, so I’d have to purchase one whose end result
was white… is there one like that?? (2) Would I be able to pull a
needle out of the stuff later if I left it in the compound while it
dried… or would it be better to just pass a needle through and pull
it out - and would the hole not collapse on itself when the needle is
removed?
I have some “pearly” polymer clay I had initially thought to try,
but I couldn’t possibly bake it to cure it for fear of damaging what
is most likely plastic under the surface treatment, and I’m
unfamiliar enough with this substance to know how it would react
without the heated curing process.
The downside to this idea is that I’d be on unfamiliar ground… with
someone else’s pearl strand. I wouldn’t even consider this coarse if
I could come up with something better (even the double knotting was
a bit disturbing to me)… and I certainly wouldn’t do it without
explaining the issues to the customer and getting permission first.
Any other creative solutions - or helpful suggestions for following
through with my unorthodox idea - will be appreciated.
Losing some much needed sleep in northern NY,
Karan