? mandrels marked for multiple students

[wildwire]

Hi,

How do you mark and what do you mark with - the mandrels so that each student knows who's bead is who's? We have a deeper kiln so the marks may be in the heat of the kiln....

Thanks,
Shauna

[LyndaJ]

Each student pick a particular (and easily identified) rod color and they put a small spacer at the end of the rod before it gets popped into the kiln. Keep a list of the colors for easy ID. and remind them part way through the bead to mark it.

[Mark Parkinson]

Go to your local welding supplier and ask for the heat proof "welding" paint markers, I use them for my blacksmithing and they withstand the 3200 degree gas forge heat and the colours stay bright , they should stand up to an annealing kiln :)

[Teague]

I've seen the opposite, non business end dipped in some kind of heat safe paint. Or sticking out with nail polish. Everyone has a color. Actually when I took my first class they were all laid out at each station , red, yellow, etc...

Teague

[KathyDinBC]

I do the colored glass thing, too. I give each student a small container (those zip lock food containers) with sand and dipped mandrels. I put a small spacer on the end of each mandrel and make a list of the colors. At the beginning of the class, I write down who has what color so we know who the beads belong to when they come out of the kiln.

[Carolyn M]

I learned in a studio where they used the coloured glass circle thing. We had to mark our own - first spacers!

[wildwire]

Thanks for everyone's ideas...we used to just batch anneal so everyone had their own bucket at their station to cool their beads in and I would take pictures of each buckets beads...Now that we have a new kiln I am trying to get everyone to use it to garage their beads but the little spacer beads are either cracking or falling off the mandrels. It hasn't been a very consistant way to track the beads yet. I will try the welding markers...I tried regular sharpie markers but they aren't showing their color well and they are also washing off.

Shauna

[Karen Hardy]

All the classes I took we used stringers to make
a mini spacer on the end of the mandrel. Worked great!

[ginkgoglass]

My first beads were so ugly, I don't think I would ever confuse them with anyone elses! LOL! No marker needed . . .

[menty666]

we just marked ours in class with a piece of masking tape with our initials on it, but the ends dangled out of the kiln too

[stephaniemaddalena]

lampwork a small dot on the non business end of the mandrel in different colors....tape burns

[tt4st]

I use nail polish to mark the wonky, bent end of a mandrel so I don't dip that end in my release. It doesn't come off and comes in lots of colors.