Featured Broken Coral necklace silver clasp

This was in a box of bits an old friend gave me several years ago, trying to sort out my clutter and re-discovered it. Sorry some of the photos are a bit murky it's a murky sort of day here.

What are the white bits on some of the beads? Is it part of the coral or something I should be removing? Not sure if I should attempt re-stringing this I'm not sure if I have the patience.

 

Beautiful antique coral, I love it.

It looks like part of the coral to me, some corals have that. You could try rubbing it gently with your nail to see if it comes off, but I think it is natural. I have an antique Moroccan coral necklace with similar white spots.

 

Thank you, it doesn't come of with my nail I will just leave it alone now

 

Then it's part of the coral, just like my Moroccan necklace.

 

Oh, it's beautiful! You should try restringing it.
It's easy, and there are lots of great tutorials online.

 

I'm just looking for some silk thread in the right colour

 

Yep, red coral often has white inside, sometimes they used the effect while carving flowers like this:

 

I actually have a coral flower ring which has the same use of the white part, didn't think of it before.

 

"Oh, it's beautiful! You should try restringing it."

It'll be well worth the effort...an' if you find the task daunting, find a competent bead person and pay 'em for the effort...it won't be much.

Count the beads first, 'tho; Trust, but Verify!

 

Ooh, coral…………love it

 

I'd like to try re-stringing my own old coral knotted necklace. The current "silk" is a dirty white... should it be restrung in white or in a coral color? Opinions welcome!

Beautiful necklace, crazycatlady!

 

If the holes in the beads are small, so that you would be using a finer gauge of silk, making small knots, I'd go with white. If holes are larger so knots are going to be more conspicuous, I'd go for a coral shade, although not necessarily an exact match.

 

Either way, if you can master the close knotting, you'll be very pleased to have accomplished this restoration...and the results will be spectacular! Good Fortune to you!

 

I’ve done a few of these and my best tip is to buy some cheaper thread as well as the silk and practice knotting with the cheap stuff and some similar size worthless beads first. It can take a bit of practice to get the knots right and silk is expensive. I had to cut several attempts apart and start again before I got the hang of it.

 

There seem to be a variety of bead-knotting methods but this tutorial makes bead/pearl knotting without specialty tools (other than a pair of tweezers) look do-able (go to 11:28):

 

This was a great video. Thanks for posting it!

 

When (not if!) you're successful, we respectfully request full image documentation here!

Those coral baubles are simply spectacular!

 

Thank you, I will try this method when my silk thread arrives I've gone with coral colour thread as it looked more or less the same colour as the original. If indeed it is the original. I found some more of the tiniest beads in the bottom of the box which must have fallen out of the envelope the necklace was in, it looks like someone has attempted to restring or repair before and given up, they're on a piece of lighter coloured thread.

 

It should look wonderful after restringing. Looking forward to seeing the results!

 

I tried a few methods and found just tweezers was the most successful. A knotting tool just didn’t get the knot close enough to the bead. You need good quality tweezers though that don’t bend and hold the thread tight.