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Tips, Techniques, and Questions -- Technical questions or tips

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  #1  
Old 2008-08-14, 4:25am
Art of Hand's Avatar
Art of Hand Art of Hand is offline
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Default How I get even sized round beads again and again ...

Hi all! I have never done this, but let me try! I am a 99% selftaught Lampworker, and have developed some ways of melting glass that is not neccesarily as what others do. Sometimes I figure something out, and then a few weeks after I messed up a lot of glass, and figured a tecnique out, I discover a tutorial on how to do it - sometimes to a T of how I did it!

Anyway, here is a pictorial of how I get even sized round beads.

My tools that I use is just a parrallel masher, my trusty surgical scalpel and my torch. AND the bottom part of a brass press!

Step 1:
Make a small disk on your mandrel. I normally do about 3 - 4 windings of fairly thin glass.

Step 2:
Melt the disk into a small doughnut, allow the glass to melt well onto the mandrel to set a nice footprint.

Step 3:
Take your mashers and press lightly, turn the mandrel 180 degrees, and press the same amount, so you end up with a square/rectangular bead. By pressing the same weight, you will spread your glass evenly on the mandrel, to secure an even footprint. Then I normally turn the mandrel about 90 degrees and press again, turn 180 degrees and turn. if the glass is still soft enough, I will continue to press and turn, take the mandrel back into the flame to heat up the gather a bit, and press, turn, press, you get the idea ...

Step 4:
Now to make sure that your footprint is wide enough, I place the mandrel over the baseplate of a press and measure one of the hollows that I would like my round bead to be. If I need to get the footprint a bit wider, I repeat the press process for a bit, measuring it every now and then. After a few beads, I can eyeball the width quite easily so that I do not really need to measure and press the whole time.

Step 5:
Now I need to load more glass onto the footprint bead. Again, rather start with to little, rather than too much glass. (it's much easier to add than remove glass!)

Step 6:
Melt it in. You will notice that your footprint is now slightly narrower than it was when you had placed the original footprint down. I loose about 2 mm in width doing this. Eyeball the top and bottom curve of your bead. If it is too narrow, you will have sharp edges on you beadholes. If you have too much of a curve, you will end up with a not round bead, but lovely dimples. I aim to get somewhere between these 2 extremes.

Step 7:
Now you have a neat round bead that you will be able to reproduce time and again. Remember that when you add glass for decoration, you might loose your neat roundness, so start with a bit of a not 100% round bead before adding decorations, should you aim for round!

Step 8:
Pop bead into the kiln!

Problem solving:
Should you have difficulty to obtain neat edges in step 3 and 4, use a sharp knife/blade and cut about 1,5 mm from the edge of the undercut to push the glass to the edge and level to the rest of the footprint. If you do this closer to the edge of the glass footprint, you will end up with an uneven edge again!


I hope that this will help you! I would love to get feedback and pics!

Best regards
Diana
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  #2  
Old 2008-08-14, 4:57am
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Nice tutorial.
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  #3  
Old 2008-08-14, 5:17am
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Ooooo...thank you!! I've been doin' a droop and swoop method which isn't real good for consistency.
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  #4  
Old 2008-08-14, 1:09pm
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Nice work on the tutorial! I always end up doing so many things to my beads that it's hard to make them the same size, but starting out with them nice and even is the best first step!
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  #5  
Old 2008-08-14, 2:41pm
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Sweet! Cool beans Diana! Thanks for sharing, I'm going to try this one.
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  #6  
Old 2008-08-14, 3:08pm
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Yea! Something to use my press for! I've never even used it as an actual press yet. LOL!
Thanks bunches for this.

I'm not sure I understand the problem solving part. Once I make those cuts (if the edges aren't even), do I melt and re-press? Add more glass first? Or just continue on with the rest of the tut? Probably a really dumb question but oh well!
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  #7  
Old 2008-08-14, 3:16pm
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ziggys View Post
Yea! Something to use my press for! I've never even used it as an actual press yet. LOL!
Thanks bunches for this.

I'm not sure I understand the problem solving part. Once I make those cuts (if the edges aren't even), do I melt and re-press? Add more glass first? Or just continue on with the rest of the tut? Probably a really dumb question but oh well!
I'm kinda scratching my head on this one, too. You put a dent in the glass, which then pushes the glass underneath into a better dimple, then melt in? Thanks for sharing. Great way to get consistent results.
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  #8  
Old 2008-08-14, 10:14pm
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Sometimes when the glass gets pressed (step 4), you may not get an even glass volume around the mandrel. By pressing a milimeter or what from the edge, you are pushing the glass edge that is uneven into a nice straight line, so correcting your footpath for an even edge (around the mandrel hole). After I have done that, I just leave it, and add my glass in the middle to build up the round bead. No need to first melt that smooth. I will take a photo of the uneven footpath and with glass added, and post it.

Diana
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  #9  
Old 2008-08-14, 10:17pm
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Thanks Diana! I need a bit of help and this looks great! I can't wait to see the photos of the "adjustments" with fixing the footprint. Thanks for posting!
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  #10  
Old 2008-08-15, 11:39pm
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Deesigned Beads View Post
Sometimes when the glass gets pressed (step 4), you may not get an even glass volume around the mandrel. By pressing a milimeter or what from the edge, you are pushing the glass edge that is uneven into a nice straight line, so correcting your footpath for an even edge (around the mandrel hole). After I have done that, I just leave it, and add my glass in the middle to build up the round bead. No need to first melt that smooth. I will take a photo of the uneven footpath and with glass added, and post it.

Diana
This in of itself sounds like a great tip! Uneven footprints can be a huge problem. I wonder how this would work for Big Hole Beads!!! I'm going to play around with it and see what happens.
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  #11  
Old 2008-08-16, 5:07pm
volkanokaren volkanokaren is offline
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Thank you.

Karen
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  #12  
Old 2010-03-14, 6:50pm
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Brilliant! Thank you.
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