Frayed silk?

[LBoone]

I recently bought 2 strands of Akoya pearls from a customer of ours who works part time at a jewelry store. (He is learning to set stones and fabricate jewelry from another employee.) The pearls were obtained from another store by the jeweler who is instructing him in return for some custom work that he had done. One strand is about 8.5mm, and one is about 6mm. My question is this: on the smaller strand, the silk looks somewhat fuzzy along a couple of inches of the strand. The silk itself looks clean, and the fuzziness is not along the whole strand just those couple of inches along one side. When stringing, I have seen similar results when I actually cut the silk a little being overzealous with my tweezers. This does appear to be really fine silk. Does this fraying indicate that these pearls have been worn, or could this be found on a new strand?

The price was such that even if they are previously owned I still got a wonderful deal, and he did not say that they were "new" but the fact that they came from a jewelry store made me think they were new. I'm just curious. I am thinking I will re-string them myself because even though it is REALLY slight fuzz it makes me nervous to think it might be weak there and break!

Any thoughts?

 

[pattye]

Most of the silk thread available is made up of short pieces of silk that are plied into thicker strands. If the thread isn't stretched out at the same point on the necklace, it is probably safe to wear. Sometimes just pulling the silk through the pearls will cause it to get a bit fuzzy, especially toward the far end of the strand. When I was stringing primarily with silk, there would sometimes seem to be a place in the thread that was weaker, although the brands I used were the top quality ones.

Sounds like you got some terrific pearls, and restringing won't be a problem at all since you can do it yourself.

 

[LBoone]

Thanks Pattye! I actually sat down under my Ott Light and took a better look, the fraying is over the whole strand it is just worse in that spot than the rest of the strand! These definitely need to be restrung. They have a nice 14kt fish hook clasp, that I think is just a tad too large for the pearls, so I am thinking of restringing them without a clasp (it is a 24" strand, so I can fit it over my head) and then I can use that clasp on something else.

I got a REALLY good deal on these. The guy that had them was going to give them to his girlfriend, but the broke up (sorry for him, yeah for me!) and he just didn't want to see them anymore. After all, the only cost to him had been his labor doing some work for the other jewelry store. So he pretty much gave them to the young man that sold them to me. And he pretty much gave them to me! (I'll say that a wholesale price for the clasps was not a lot more than I paid for both strands.) I wore the larger strand for the first time today, and even my husband noticed them from across the store. He commented on the luster. They are really nice ones, with a pink overtone.

These more than made up for the lusterless Tahitian strand that I DIDN'T buy at that auction earlier ;-)

 

[GemGeek]

Great story. I have had some fraying while knotting silk, but I think you really want to get in there and make them your own by knotting them yourself!