A knotted chain looks unsalvageable and almost never is. What you are looking at is not one knot but a few loose loops that have pulled tight, and they come apart in the reverse order they went in. The trick is to stop pulling.
The short version
Lay it flat, open the clasp, dust the knot with baby powder, and widen it with two pins pushed into the centre and drawn apart. Never pull both ends: that is what turns a loose tangle into a hard knot.
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What you need
A hard flat surface with good light, two straight pins or sewing needles, and something slippery: baby powder, talc, baby oil or olive oil. That is it. Do not start with your fingers on a chain held in the air, which is how most people make it worse.
The method
1. Lay it flat and open it up
Put the chain on the table and spread it out so you can see the shape of the tangle. Unfasten the clasp. Most tangles are the clasp end having passed through a loop, and once the clasp is open you can often pull the whole thing straight in one move.
2. Add something slippery
Dust the knot with baby powder or talc and work it in with a fingertip. Powder gets between the links and lets them slide instead of gripping. If powder is not enough, a single drop of baby oil or olive oil on the knot does the same job, wet.
On plated chains prefer powder. Oil is harmless in itself, but it holds dust and it seeps into porous stones, so you have to wash it off afterwards with warm soapy water and dry it completely.
3. Work with two pins, not with your fingers
Hold the knot flat and push both pin tips into the centre of it, then draw them apart. You are not pulling the chain, you are widening the knot. Repeat from different angles. Every time the knot loosens, stop and look again: usually a loop is now obviously free, and you slip it out by hand.
4. Follow one strand at a time
Once it is loose, find one end of the chain and trace it, undoing one loop at a time. Do not switch between ends. This is the slow part and the part people skip, and it is the one that works.
5. Wash and dry
Rinse off the powder or oil in warm water with a drop of washing-up liquid, then dry completely with a soft cloth. Leaving a chain damp is how you get tarnish, which is a different job entirely: cleaning a tarnished silver necklace.
What not to do
Pulling both ends. It feels productive and it converts a loose tangle into a hard knot in one second.
Pliers on the chain itself. Pliers are for jump rings, not for links under tension, and they will flatten and crease a fine chain permanently.
Cutting. Almost nobody needs to cut.
If a link snaps while you work
That is recoverable and it is a two-minute repair: you replace the broken link with an open jump ring of the same gauge and metal. An assortment of jump rings in silver and gold with the opening tool costs around $9 and saves the necklace. You will also want two small chain-nose and flat-nose pliers with smooth jaws, about $8, because serrated jaws score soft metals and the marks do not polish out.
Two chains tangled together
Same method, one extra step: identify which chain is which before you start, by colour, thickness or clasp type. Then treat the thinner one as the one that moves. Trying to move the heavier chain through the finer one is what snaps fine chains.
Stop it happening again
Chains tangle because they move freely in a pile. There are three fixes, in order of how much they cost.
Free: fasten the clasp through a drinking straw so the chain cannot double back on itself. It looks improvised and it works better than most jewellery boxes.
Around $10: hang them. A wall necklace organiser keeps each chain vertical and separate, which is the only storage method that makes tangling impossible rather than just less likely.
Around $25, for travelling: a suitcase is the worst environment a chain can be in, because it is a pile that gets shaken for hours. A leather travel jewellery case with individual zipped compartments solves it properly. If you would rather not spend anything, thread each chain through a straw and tape the ends.
Related
Other chain problems we have written up: a pendant hole too small for the chain, shortening a chain without cutting it, and which length sits where.
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