Repairing A Beloved Necklace

Do you know how it feels when you’ve hung onto a favorite piece of jewelry for so long it feels like your second skin?  No matter how it looks to outsiders, you wear your favorite pendant or necklace with pride.  However, it was time for me to face facts: The necklace cord was looking pretty ratty and bad. I had to replace it, but I was lazy and didn’t want to let go of my pendant.

Eventually, I decided that replacing the necklace cord would ensure that I wouldn’t lose my beloved pendant in the long run. It was time for a trip to my local craft store to purchase a couple of easy and inexpensive items:

• Darice Jewelry Designer Findings Leather Necklace Kit 2mm Black
• Artistic Wire Tool Chain Maille Chain/Bent Nose Pliers 2pc

(I already had a pair of the pliers on hand, from an earlier “crafting fit” I had gone through, so my costs were really low.)

Thus, the operation to save my necklace began.

First, I had to measure out how much cord I wanted to use for the new length. The old cord had a knotted situation where I could adjust the length of the necklace, but that wore out the cord, so it frayed and the pendant started hanging too low.

I took a part of the new cord and looped it around my neck to see how high I wanted my pendant to hang from now on.  I put my finger where I wanted the pendant to eventually rest, and held the excess behind my neck. When I was satisfied, I cut the cord to the length I measured around my neck.

Next, I took out the fasteners. In this package the hook and the spring were easy to put together; just hook the clasp into the spring and close the spring around the clasp to lock it in.

After that, I started attaching the fasteners to the cut ends of the cord. I used the needle-nose pliers to bend the bottom rings of the clasps around the cord, to lock in the cord ends. Worked pretty well, too! (Too well, as I found out later, but I’ll get to that.)

With the catching end of the fasteners, I slipped my pendant onto the cord, then closed the open ring on the other fastener and attached it to the other cord end, making sure the bottom ring was tightly crimped onto the end.

Once I attached both fasteners to the cord I thought I was finished with repairing my necklace. It looked pretty good!

Then I tried it on.

The pendant still hung too low on my chest for my taste. No problem, I thought. I’ll just uncrimp one of the fasteners and trim the cord down a bit.

Easier said than done; I had done a thorough job of crimping the coils onto the cord, and I couldn’t pry them open again.

Long story short, I ended up cutting off the offending fastener and using a fresh one. I didn’t crimp it closed as hard as I did the first one—just enough so I could try on the necklace again. In the end, I had to trim the cord a couple more times until I got to my desired length. THEN I crimped the fastener closed tight.

Lesson learned: allow about an inch for the fasteners when measuring your necklace cord. Depending on the fasteners used, they add about an inch of length when they’re attached.

Victory! I saved my beloved pendant.

By the way, you can use these instructions to create a new simple necklace for yourself, using any type of hanging pendant/locket/whatever.

Let me know if you’ve found this article helpful.