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I'm pretty new, and I'm having trouble getting the hang of making stringers and wanted to know if it was better to keep trying to make my own stringers or is it ok to buy them?
Thank you
If you make them yourself you can control the size.
What's the specific trouble you're having?
I'm having trouble with them gettting to thin and not very long
Here's what I do:
Get a gather (melted glob of glass) at the end of my rod. I make it about the size of a large pea.
Pull the rod out of the flame.
Grab a very small bit of the melty glass with tweezers.
Wait a second for the glass to cool a tiny bit.
Then slowly pull.
If you do it while the glass is too hot you'll get very thin hair-like stringers.
The slower you pull, the fatter the stringer.
It sounds like you might not be heating enough glass and pulling too soon or too fast.
Keep at it. You'll get a feel for it after doing a few.
Making stringer is great practice. I'd recommend keeping at it. Holly's advice is great.
Melt the end of a rod, slowly turning it in your dominant hand to start with. Angle your hand down slightly from the flame (not parallel to your bench). this will allow a small gather of glass to build. When it's about the size of a pea, take the gather out of the flame, pause, and with tweezers, pliers, or the tip of another rod, slowly pull out the molten glass.
The pause is important, especially if you are working soft glass. Otherwise the stringer will be very thin and difficult for a beginner to use.
Arrow springs has a tool I use also for my stringers I love it. Called Twisty Tweezers the more glass you grab the thicker your stringer but it is still improtant that you follow the great info Holly & lynda has given you.
Hope this helps. http://www.arrowsprings.com/
Elizabeth Beads
2010-06-23, 8:15pm
Pulling stringer is a basic skill for lampworking. Practice practice practice. It's not that it isn't "OK" to buy stringer. I buy some Commercial Stringer for specific uses. But you will be limited in colors as many colors are not sold in stringer form. Mostly though, It is part of learning heat control and once you "get it" you will have it forever. Good luck!
SilverRiverJewelry
2010-06-23, 8:45pm
I still have a hard time with also. But I like being able to do stringer in any color I want. I figure sooner or later something will click (probably later lol) and I will *get* it. In the meantime, skinny stringer can be fun to play with too lol.
J. Savina
2010-06-23, 9:31pm
If you don't want your stringers to be so skinny, try waiting one or two seconds before you pull the glass, and pull slowly. Waiting will allow the glass to stiffen just a bit and your stringer will be thicker. The bigger the melted glob you start with, the longer you can make your stringer. I use pliers to pull mine, but there's so many different ways to do it. Practice practice practice. And don't forget, if your stringers aren't what you'd like them to be, you can always re-melt them back on the rod and start all over again.
J.
Making stringer is great practice. I'd recommend keeping at it. Holly's advice is great.
Melt the end of a rod, slowly turning it in your dominant hand to start with. Angle your hand down slightly from the flame (not parallel to your bench). this will allow a small gather of glass to build. When it's about the size of a pea, take the gather out of the flame, pause, and with tweezers, pliers, or the tip of another rod, slowly pull out the molten glass.
The pause is important, especially if you are working soft glass. Otherwise the stringer will be very thin and difficult for a beginner to use.
Much better instructions Lynda!
One thing Loren Stump will tell you is just because it will pull doesn't mean you have to pull. Take your time when you first start pulling when you think you have it the thickness you need . Blow on it and pull slowly and it will stay the same all the way.
Corina has a DVD on stringer control which I found to be very helpful. I also purchased a tube of assorted stringers from Frantz so that I could try various colors before purchasing a quarter pound or more of one individual color. Good luck.
Linda
Donīt worry about the length of the stringer.... that will come with practise.
ellyloo
2010-06-24, 8:06am
It's perfectly ok to buy them if you find stringers you want. They're mostly 'the basics' colours though.
If you have some obscure silver colour that you want a stringer with, you need to know how to pull your own.
Don't worry about waste when you practice, just keep pulling... if it doesn't work, melt it back in! No biggie. White is a good one to practice with...it goes all transparent when TOO runny...
Plus, a stringer doesn't have to be from the END of a rod. You can melt in the middle of a rod, and pull the two pieces apart. The rod then becomes a comfortable handle for the stringer. You can melt shorts together this way, and then pull stringer between them...
Thanks everyone for the great advice, can't wait to give stringers another try. I will keep practice to make them.
Jean Bruce
I both buy and make them. It is really nice to buy a mix and get a few colors you may not have, not to mention it saves on time A L O T! I bought a lot of a few colors in stringer, cobalt blue, blue adventurine, ivory, and clear, I might get a few others as i go, but reallly a mix was the best idea, you see what you actually use. When I was on a HH I would do all my encasing with stringer. It was so much easier to get a uniform encasement with commercial pulled stringer.
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