VapidLapid
Ideal_Rock
- Joined
- Feb 18, 2010
- Messages
- 4,272
In September a dear friend of mine asked me if I could do her a favor. She had a pendant that she had gotten years ago in Thailand at one of the temples. The plastic capsule with the gold figure in it had fallen out of the setting. I said I would take a look at it. Well first I had to give her the bad news that the setting was brass, not gold. She assured me that the figure in the plastic capsule was gold, and since there were a few gold atoms on its surface I let that go. I told her that I would not be able to make the brass setting work. The bezel was thinner than aluminum foil either from wear or quite likely manufacture. I told her I could glue it in, which might not hold for long, or make a new setting of real gold. I did a kind of lousy job making the gold setting, but it was gold and would securely hold Obi Kwan Kenobi, as I had named the figure. In these first pictures you can see Obi in the plastic, the original setting and the new one.
Some of you may already have guessed what happened when I tried to push the bezel down over the back of the piece.
Even in those pictures you can see the cracks on the right side of the front case. Ultimately the whole case broke. Thin plastic is not strong enough to bear the forces of setting, even when the metal is dead soft, high karat gold .
So I looked around on the internet, and found, much to my surprise, a vendor in Thailand with a huge inventory of these things. They actually had The exact pendant and figure. In fact they had two versions, one in all "gold" and one in two tone "gold. So for $29 I ordered the "gold" one. I also explained to them what had happened and asked if they could ALSO sell me just an empty plastic capsule. No they could not. Three weeks later they told me that they did not have that one any more, but would give me an extra $15 credit toward picking out a different one. So I picked the two tone one. A week later they said they did not have that one either, and again increased my credit amount to pick out another. I said no thank you just send me a refund. and perhaps please tell me where I might be able to get just the plastic case. They did refund me, but were unable to guide me to the source of the case. I searched ebay, novelty vendors, bubblegum machine toy vendors, but came up with nothing. I told my friend the whole story. She was sad, but grateful that I had tried. I showed her the website of the place I ordered the replacement from. They did not update their site and were showing it still available. It was not. Still, I had a plan, a crazy idea....
Some of you may already have guessed what happened when I tried to push the bezel down over the back of the piece.
Even in those pictures you can see the cracks on the right side of the front case. Ultimately the whole case broke. Thin plastic is not strong enough to bear the forces of setting, even when the metal is dead soft, high karat gold .
So I looked around on the internet, and found, much to my surprise, a vendor in Thailand with a huge inventory of these things. They actually had The exact pendant and figure. In fact they had two versions, one in all "gold" and one in two tone "gold. So for $29 I ordered the "gold" one. I also explained to them what had happened and asked if they could ALSO sell me just an empty plastic capsule. No they could not. Three weeks later they told me that they did not have that one any more, but would give me an extra $15 credit toward picking out a different one. So I picked the two tone one. A week later they said they did not have that one either, and again increased my credit amount to pick out another. I said no thank you just send me a refund. and perhaps please tell me where I might be able to get just the plastic case. They did refund me, but were unable to guide me to the source of the case. I searched ebay, novelty vendors, bubblegum machine toy vendors, but came up with nothing. I told my friend the whole story. She was sad, but grateful that I had tried. I showed her the website of the place I ordered the replacement from. They did not update their site and were showing it still available. It was not. Still, I had a plan, a crazy idea....
)) that Murry can play with and a DH that can sit down and make funky things with VL. 
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