Raking, feathering and pulling...
 

I know it as raking, but I have heard so many different names for it. But what I know for sure is, that I suck in it! Every time I try to rake, I just end up pulling too much of a glass to totally mess up the shape of the bead.
How do you do it without ending up with this loop looking end to the raking and having the ditch in the middle of you bead?
I use tungsten rake, but have heard peeps using also glass to do it, how thick of a stringer it needs to be, and how do you heat the bead to do this... pretty hot in the to-be-raked area?
I think I need to have a raking bootcamp, and even though our yard seems to need one, Im not talking about that raking!
Thanks for your help!
Pia

Dang, I ran into this last night and am looking forward to ideas.

I ended up using a steel pick and allowing the end to pick up a bit of glass and then just kinda used that. When I was done I quenched the pick so the glass shattered off.

Take a scrap of clear. Heat a small ball on the tip and pull out to a thread. Heat cut the thread near the base rod (leave about an inch).
Barely touch this to your design to pull a feathered design. Your description sounds as if you are going too deep into the glass. You want to keep your pull tight on the surface.
Joan

Thanks Joan, I think I am also not heating the area to be raked enough, and heating too much of the rest of the bead... since I seem to end up pulling too much of it. I will try your technique, but will be willing to try others if there are any. Thanks!!!

What Joan said! I was moving way too much glass too until I learned the 'glass pick' technique from Holly Cooper.

And I just spot-heat the area that I'm going to rake from and to, and not too deeply. You want the surface nice and warm so it will move while not distorting the shape too much. ;)

What do you do with the stringer? Let it cool and just crack it off? Or flame cut?

Wow, what a great tip!! I always use a tungstun pick and it makes a mess. Thanks!

I let it cool and snap the tip off with pliers.

What they said - but also, it works better for me if I do a little bit at a time.

In other words, if I want to go all the way around the bead, I heat a little, pull a little, heat a little more, etc. Very localized heat.

Good question - I'd like to hear other ideas too.

Furrowing is a great alternative to dragging. I find it's more precise and I can get really cool feathering done that way.
You get what you want to feather really hot and (I use a small, cheap paring knife) drag the sharp edge on the glass, pulling it in the direction you want it to go.

Great advice here. I too use the glass pick method. I use the commercial clear stringers, heat the end and pull it out thin. To make a really sharp pick break the tip rather than flame cutting it. Now focus the heat just at the surface without letting it go deep into the bead. Like others said too, you can do a little at a time if needed. If you keep your rake really shallow right at the surface you shouldn't have that deep furrow at the end. Good luck!

Watch this video. John (Otter) made it to show how to apply his feather murrini, but it is the same process that you are talking about. I filmed it and he is the Star!:cool: There is part one on pulling the "tool" for raking, and part two where he uses it to rake.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hjaX...eature=related

Some time back I read a description by someone who called it "plowing". Yep, plowing it is. I must be a farmer at heart. I know you're supposed to get the basic bead shape & then never distort that while you're fooling around putting superficial decoration stuff on, but that never works for me. Heat control sucks. I must reshape that bead 2-3 times during the process.

If I try using a glass pick, it usually ends up with a bit of the bead color on the end. If I dip it in the water can to try to shock it off, the pick shocks too, & when I touch it to the bead again, it often fractures & leaves globs of clear on the bead. If I try to incorporate the little glob of colored glass into the pick (yeah, lazy, I know), it invariably pops off when I touch the bead leaving a colored, as opposed to clear, blob. So I end up using a brass or tungsten tool & plow away. Oh, did I mention my heat control sucks?

:lol: LOL that's me if I use a steel pick but if you use a thread of glass like on Kims Seahorse...


https://www.theflowmagazine.com/inde...FmZmxlY2siO30=

I like to have several glass picks handy so you don't have to worry about the blob on the end. Also your glass pick can leave behind a little color, sometimes a good thing, so sometimes I try to color coordinate the glass pick to the bead. Clear is what I use most often though.
Definitely try to just heat the surface area of what you want to feather. Kiss with heat and pull out of the flame, repeat a few times.

Cynthia & David - thank you; those are both really good resources to have.

I only wish that Kim's tutorial had been completely in English; my computer apparently translated some of it into computer geeklese. :lol: Most of it is intelligible, though, & the pics are great & need no translation.

John Rizzi is such an impeccable artist. Watching him I learn again (& again) that it really doesn't pay to be impatient & cut corners. I suppose it doesn't help that my eyesight is not great, & that the closer & more detailed I work, the more my hands shake, even using a creation station. Ugh. Some days being an old crone sucks more than others.

Wow, love to wake up and see so many awesome advices here! I think I will hopefully get it to work little better now! There are several advices that I kinda knew, but did not use, like little at a time... that just dawned on me last time when I had misplaced half of the glass on a crunch bead... not much I could have done at a time to fix it without distorting the design. I will defenitely try the glass technique, or actually I think I want to learn them both. Hate get going to work, cause I really want to just watch the videos that were posted and go try some raking, but I guess I can just blame myself for picking up an extra shift ](*,)

Anyhow, thank you for so many who have helped me with this, I am sure I will be able to tackle this now with less frustration. Thank you!!! :love:

I am such a visual learner Otter your u-tube video was awesome

I rake using a clear stringer pulled to about 2mm thick. I tried using the tungsten pick and not only do I not get the same effect, it will actually "cut" the surface of the glass so when I reheat, the base color underneath will seep out of the cut. This happens if I use a tungsten pick to rake frit that is on the surface of another color, like Uroboros white.

The larger the bead, the easier it is to rake. I make small beads of 11-12mm and even though I have been making the raked swirl kinds for years, I can still have problems. I have good raking days, and then there are the bad raking days where I just about pull the beads off the mandrels. When that happens one too many times, I will get up from the work table and find something else like a movie to make me relax some. LOL! Then I go back in and try again.

How I rake these little beads with a stringer:

I make my base bead, roll in frit, melt that in and get the bead evenly rounded.

Take bead out of the flame for it to cool some, because you don't want to rake the surface of a bead when the core may still be somewhat molten. That's how you will drag the bead out of shape, and trying to get them rounded again is difficult and it may melt your raked areas in too much.

Take your slightly cooled bead and go back into the flame to heat spot the area you want to start the rake, rotate that where it's just barely outside the direct hit of the flame, then lightly touch the stringer to the surface and rotate mandrel to rake all the way around the bead. See, as you rotate the flame is hitting the bead, but you want your stringer tip just outside the flame so you don't melt it too.

Sometimes too much of the clear stringer will melt off the tip onto the bead s you are raking, but with practice you will get pretty good at using that stringer as a rake rather than as a "decoration". ;) :D

The second set I used a periwinkle blue stringer to rake, since it was one of the colors in the swirls anyway. I didn't like the little "ruts" the clear stringer make the first time I made those beads.

Lisi, thank you so much for the detailed explanation, I think that helps me to understand where to keep the bead when raking... that seemed to have been one of the problems I didnt even realize. I heated and then pulled out of the flame to rake. That makes so much more sense... duh! I think it will just take some PPP to get it to work right for me. :lol:

What torch do you have?

Minor :D

Oh that's good! I had to ask because I wasn't sure if you had the HH or an oxy-propane torch set up. I had a lot of trouble with raking using stringer when I was using the HH because the flame is all over the place, so I actually did get better results using the steel curved rake or a tungsten poker. :)

I loved that video... was able to make little time to watch it before I have to head to work... That also explains very well what to do with that loop thingie that you get to the end of the rake. Yay!!! Kudos for you guys for making it!
I noticed that I probably run my minor on too subtle of a flame... the heat control might be easier if I had a little more kick to it.
Thank you everyone for your help... it really has helped me to understand what is it that I am not getting!
Now off to work again... :(

Raking is when you rake in one direction and stop.
Feathering is when you continue your dragging of the glass.

I also use the transparent pick for my raking (don't use opaque it is too soft).
Then I make sure I super heat my pathway pull the bead out of the flame and very lightly touch the surface of the bead and rake. If your bead cools too much just heat again and pick up where you left off. Make sure you don't pull the pick from the glass, it will pull the glass with it. So rack and then at the end of the rake let the pick cool and then just break it off.

Also this is a COLD rake. Your glass pick should always stay out of the flame.

Raking is one of the oldest glass techniques and I learned it from Tom Holland who makes it look like its so simple, not.

hi guys, does the glass rake work on boro, has anyone tried it

It absolutely works with boro! You just need to heat ahead of the raking you want done and drag the rake behind. Does that make sense? I mean don't put the rake in the flame, keep it one step behind of where you are heating.

Wow Libby, those are gorgeous!!! Priceless tips from so many! Thanks!

raking techniques
 

Tried this today & it really worked!! Thanks

Hey. Great tips I will use too.

One tiny detail I can add.

Make your flame a tiny pinpoint and heat only what you want to move.