I have a really beautiful vintage antique necklace and unfortunately one of the gemstones fell out the other day! It's such a minor repair job, and I'm curious to know if I could glue the gemstone back myself? If so, what glue should I use and how?

I can just speak for myself when I say that I wouldn't want to take any risk with repairing jewelry by myself! Especially because we're talking about antique vintage jewelry, which is just so much more delicate and fragile… I just wouldn't take the risk myself. If it's money you're worried about, well I don't think you should be. These repair jobs, like you said are minor, and a local jeweler shouldn't charge you too much to do so. In fact, you should actually contact the jewelry store you got your necklace from (given that it's not passed on to you for generations as inheritance or something), and usually they would be more than happy to fix the necklace for you for a very small amount of money, sometimes even for free. I recommend that before you attempt to repair vintage jewelry by yourself, do some price comparisons between some of your local jewelry stores and I'm sure you'll be pleasantly surprised to see that they don't actually charge much on minor repairs like yours. Good luck with everything!

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It's only natural for your antique necklace to lose a few of its gemstones during the course of time, and I recommend that as long as it's a small repair job, definitely fix it yourself. Having said that, you should carefully perform any repairs and always work in a clutter-free environment, with sufficient lighting, while doing so. I recommend you use the H-G Hypo Cement tube glue because it has a very fine needle-like applicator, which ensures precision work. Before you actually glue your gemstone back in place, make sure that the cup in the necklace where you're about to place the gemstone is clean, without any previous glue residues. If this is not the case, make sure to scrape all dry residues beforehand, with the use of a sharp blade or any other appropriate tool you find laying around your house. Once your necklace cup is clean, apply a small amount of H-G Hypo glue and wait a few seconds for it to settle. It's important to apply a very small amount of glue, because you don't want the cup to overflow with glue once you place the gemstone inside – it will leave marks around the rims of your gemstone which could be very unappealing. Furthermore, it's important to let the glue settle a few seconds, because if you place the gemstone while the glue is still wet, the active agent in the glue will actually cause minor discolor your gemstone. Once the glue settled, and the surface of the glue seems quite dry and elastic, carefully place the gemstone inside the cup with the help of tweezers and push it into place.

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