As you may or may not know, I exclusively use vintage beads to create my original jewellery designs - it’s not only more sustainable, but also makes them more unique and more fun! Most of my beads come from vintage necklaces I source online and take apart. Just as I would wash any second hand clothes I buy, I also clean these necklaces before taking them apart to ensure they get to my customers looking as pristine as possible, and sanitized.
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When I first started Luneta, I used to take the necklaces apart first and proceed to clean each bead individually with warm, soapy water and kitchen paper. Sometimes I’d shake things up and use vinegar water. Both warm soapy water and vinegar water work, and this is indeed the best process for porous beads, beads coated in something (like faux pearls), handpainted beads, or just very delicate beads. If you’re not sure what a bead is made of, this is the best way to clean vintage beaded jewellery. Soap and vinegar will help loosen any dirt, but you’ll still have to brush or scrub each bead to remove the dirt completely.
Also note: If there are glued-in elements in your piece of jewellery, like rhinestones in the clasp, warm water might loosen the glue, so try not to get those parts wet.
Eventually, however, I had to bring some scale into my bead cleaning process because it took way too much work and time to clean each bead individually 😅 After a bit of online research, I found that using soda crystals (a natural product chemically similar to baking soda but better at cleaning and sanitizing) could do the trick, and put this to the test. This is how I’ve been cleaning the majority of my vintage necklaces now, except if their beads fall into the categories outlined in the above paragraph. In general, I’ve found glass and plastic beads are totally ok to clean using this method, and I read it’s also good for brightening tarnished silver if that’s something you’d like. I mostly focus on the beads of a piece of jewellery though, so can’t confirm if this method is the best for its metal parts, tarnishing-wise.
Also note: In my experience, boiling water might make cracked glass beads break apart completely. If you have cracked beads, might be best to use just warm water instead, although this might mean more brushing afterwards.
We do not certify that the beads are nuclease free. However, considering the way these beads are manufactured and packaged, they are free of contamination from nucleases. The vast majority of our customers use them as they come out of the bottle. We always recommend that homogenization of the tissue pieces be done in the presence of nucleic acid extraction media as these media are designed to denature proteins, including RNase.
Most researchers use them straight out of the bottle. Washing beads in acid is a waste of time and potentially dangerous.
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For those with applications requiring a cleaning protocol, please see below.
Promptly rinse used glass or ceramic beads in tap water and leave them soaking in a beaker containing a diluted solution of laboratory detergent or automatic dishwasher detergent. Now and then, agitate the beads by swirling them. When you have accumulated enough used beads to work with, rinse away the detergent with several changes of tap water and then with RO - or distilled water. Dry the beads overnight in an open stainless steel or glass tray at 40 to 70ºC. If the dried beads do not pour freely from the tray (i.e., some are caked together), then they were not cleaned or rinsed enough. Repeat the cleaning protocol.
Cleaning chrome steel or stainless steel beads requires a modified procedure. The washing step must last only a few minutes. Ditto for the water rinse. Then, promptly remove all residual water from the surface of the beads by rinsing the beads with three changes of absolute (100%) ethanol, isopropanol, or acetone. Air dry at room temperature.
If you are isolating nucleic acids from disrupted cells, an easy alternate cleaning method is to immerse the beads in a 1:10 dilution of ordinary household bleach (Clorox or equivalent) for 5 minutes. This not only cleans and sterilizes the beads but completely destroys contaminating nucleic acids (see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1571142) and nucleases. Of course, finish by thoroughly rinsing the beads with sterile or RO water.
All cleaned beads can be autoclaved. Note that autoclaving at traditional conditions (121º C for 20 min) will not sufficiently destroy the template activity of any contaminating DNA. Autoclaving at 121º C for 80 minutes is recommended. The presence of air during autoclaving also facilitates nucleic acid decomposition(see Biotechniques (Vol.55, Issue 6, p.296-299, Dec 2013).
Finally, a successful procedure for both sterilizing and destroying any residual nucleic acids on clean glass, ceramic or steel beads is baking clean beads at 550º F for 2h or 400º F for 4 h.
In general, beads can be recycled about ten times before they wear down to too small a size.
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