The pictures to the right and left show the final products of my efforts in our first beadmaking attempt. The number of beads I made is small (only seven), but I was lucky enough to have all of my beads survive the cooling process intact. If the glass cools too quickly, often from being left out of the fire too long before being placed in the fibre blanket, it will shatter or crack. I was pleased to find that after removal from the mandrel, all of my beads survived. The process of making beads was illuminating and I encountered a number of issues and difficulties while making them. Below I will provide pictures of each bead, and explain what issues I faced with each.
Note: The photos use lined paper to indicate scale. At the time of photography, we did not have an actual ruler handy and so made use of the resources available to us. The spaces between the lines equal 1 cm.
These are the first two beads I made. I wanted to begin with making a simple ring-shaped bead, with, what I thought would be, a simple wavy design (also called thread decorating). The bead on the right was my first attempt. First, melting the glass rod appropriately so that it does not split off onto your mandrel, resulting in half melted and half solid glass being stuck to it, is a learning experience in and of itself, and this took me awhile to get control of. Second, melting the glass and applying it to the mandrel is pretty difficult, and I struggled with getting the right taffy-like consistency that enabled you to easily apply the glass to the mandrel. I think my problem was that I did not melt enough glass to allow me to spin it onto the mandrel for more than a half turn before it got too stiff to apply. Thus, just getting the glass onto the mandrel was difficult for me. The actual bead shape was not very difficult to achieve, as spinning the glass in the flame seems to provoke a natural tendency for this shape. However, the wavy design was difficult. I could not even get a nice thin layer of stringer glass onto the bead, never-mind make that thin layer wavy. As you can see, my second attempt on the left resulted in one area that is kind of wavy on the bottom, but again I struggled with thickness.
This is a melon bead. I initially attempted to make it as my second bead, but failed and made the second ring-shaped bead above instead. Re-melting glass is quite easy and so I found myself often doing this when I was not happy with the end product of an attempt. I used the sharp tip of a metal tool for my first attempt at a melon bead. I attempted to drag lines into a ring-shaped bead, but found that it merely pulled the glass in one direction instead of creating an indent. Rose discovered that if you impress the side of this metal tool into the glass, it leaves pretty nice lines. So this bead was made using that technique, which works pretty well! You can also use the end of a putty-knife like tool to impress indents as well. This bead illustrates one other difficulty I encountered. As shown, the glass comes to a bit of a peak on top, rather than laying flat and this is due to my glass application. If it was not applied evenly, even melting it continuously would not fix this 'peaking' issue. Attempting to push the glass back into the bead with a metal tool resulted in clay from the mandrel getting pushed into the glass, also shown above as the small white line extending into the bead.
This bead is my first attempt at making a cylindrical bead shape, which is supposed to have flat edges. This bead probably highlights best the difficulties I have with flat edges and pushing the mandrel clay into the glass haha. Its fairly terrible. I have since attempted to get some of the clay off the bead. I managed to remove only a little bit after scrubbing with a toothbrush and warm water. One thing our group is going to look at in the future is cleaning methods. None of the sources we have come across so far have mentioned anything, but hopefully we can find one that does.
This bead was my first successful wave design attempt. It was also my second attempt at making a cylindrical bead shape. The shape was a semi-success only (although better than my first) as the ends are supposed to be completely flat, and as you can see, mine are kind of rounded and peaked on the left end. Getting a flat edge is extremely difficult for me. I kept pushing clay into the glass (again), and I just could not seem to get a clean line. The thread decorating was more successful. I found the quicker I moved with applying the stringer, the cleaner the line became. This was not super easy though, because again, I struggled with the optimal length of time to leave the stringer in the fire. Finally, I applied a clear coat of glass to this bead once the design was complete. This was fairly easy as continuously rotating the glass in the fire evened out the coat. Clear coats of glass usually appear on Viking foiled glass beads, but I wanted to see how difficult it would be.
This bead was supposed to be a square. However, I applied too much glass to the mandrel and could not for the life of me make it a square. Again I struggled with clean edges. By this time I found that my fingers were locking up a little bit. I have problems with my joints on a regular basis, so holding a thin mandrel and constantly rotating it definitely took its toll on my hands. I ended up switching the hands I used to rotate quite often near the end.
This was my final bead attempt. It is a segmented bead with thread decoration (spiral design). Again you can see the issues I was having with the end peaking. Other than that though, it ended up being a decent attempt. A segmented bead, while looking very difficult, was not too hard. By the time I attempted one, other people in the group had already experimented with it and found ways that worked best for them. Two methods were attempted: 1) applying two separate beads onto the mandrel 2) applying a larger quantity of glass onto the mandrel and indenting it with a metal tool. I tried both ways. I found that applying two separate beads was not optimal, and so I added more glass so I could melt both together. I then rotated it to make a ring-shape and indented it with a putty knife-like tool. This seemed to work much better for me. Applying the stringer glass resulted in my most successful attempt, and with more practice I should get even better at it (ideally anyway).
So, that sums up my first attempt at beadmaking. My biggest difficulties were with applying the glass and getting clean, flat edges. Another issue I encountered was the pain it caused in my joints. This is definitely not a job for someone who has arthritis!!
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