Help for Faith

Dear Faith - I have been thinking alot about you since your last email. Primarily I have been thinking, DON'T GIVE UP! The books and videos you have all seem to make it look so easy AND all they primarily do is show you how to make the perfect bead. What they don't show you is how to CHEAT! (We all cheat in making beads! LOL)

First of all, every perfect bead started off as a lop sided bead. Why? Because in ending a bead you leave more glass on one side of the bead than the other. So every bead has to be re-centered before embellishment can begin.

I have often thought of doing a REAL beginner book or video. The beadmakers who make the videos don't show you the beads that ended up in the trash, or how to fix their mistakes. So I am going to try to explain them to you, with my inadequate drawing skills.

I don't know at what point your beads become lop sided, so bear with me.

I would suggest doing some of these things as an exercise, learning how glass moves. Most I would suggest doing in white glass rods, because it goes clear when it is really hot and back to solid white as it is cooling, which would help you see how some of the things I am going to suggest happens.

The smaller the bead, the easier it is to round it out and center it. I remember once (and never again!) spending THREE hours twirling one (1.5") bead (made of stiff Bullseye glass) because I wanted it centered and round AND I didn't know these principles! (This was on a Hothead - I still am working on a Hothead today)

SAGGING:

First of all, when you take the bead out of the flame thinking you are done with it, do you continue to twirl it until it sets up hard? If not, the heat that is in the bead will deform the bead with gravity pulling the hotest part of the bead down causing it to be lop sided. If you make a white bead, take it out of the flame and count how long it takes for it to turn back to solid white - at least 6-8 seconds depending upon how big it is. Just hold it and watch it sag! All is not lost though, put it back in the flame and try tips below.

Next, do you turn the mandrel towards you to look at the bead to see if it is centered, before taking it out of the flame to twirl until it is cool? If so, you are sagging again, because you are holding the bead and letting the heated glass settle to the bottom.

A different sag, if you turn the mandrel towards you to look at the bead, and are slight tilting the mandrel up, then the glass flows down and you end up with bead that is lop sided on the side, rather than the bottom like those above.

And lastly, twirling too hard when the bead is very hot, will cause through centrifigcal force, a large amount of glass to move to one side of bead. You need to twirl slowly (this was the second greatest tip for me to get centered beads!) Mark the mandrel with either a scratch or pencil line, so you can see where you start on a twirl. Count slowly like to 5 to make ONE rotation of the bead. If the glass seems to be too hot, because you can see it sagging at the bottom, then either turn the flame down, or move the bead up higher into the flame so it's not melting that fast. More on this further down!

The books tell you to look at the top of the bead to see if it is centered, because too much glass on one side will pop up at your eyes and tell you it's not distributed evenly. That philosophy never worked for me. I look at the sides of the beads. If they are centered the bead (donut type) will be perfectly even on the sides. When a bead is lop sided, there is MORE glass on one area of the bead that causes that area to BULGE out. This can be clearly seen without squinting and trying to line up the top of the bead with something to see if there is too much glass in a area.

ONLY after a bead has cooled off and chilled, then look at it anyway you want to see if it is centered. If not, you can put it back into the flame and start working on it or using some of the cheat tips below!

NOTE:

I will say that until I got a table which gave me arm rest area, my centering of beads suffered because fatigue and movement of hand holding the mandrel made for uneven twirling. (This was as late as November 2001 - so I see on ISGB archives) I got a table at Staples and just didn't put in the computer keyboard materials. (Sheesh, just getting the link I see the price had gone up over 100% since a year ago Christmas! ) Another girl on ISGB came up with a brilliant idea, opening a table up the width of where you would put in a leaf for the table, and scooting herself into that space, with a board over the opening to place the torch, rods, etc, and using the table itself for arm resting area. Then I folded a hand towel into thirds, then in half, and rolled it and taped it, and used those for the elbows (which will start to pain you like Corina's book says)

This is my work area. The window is covered with a plywood board because I don't want the neighbors to see what I am doing with a flame! LOL The fan is at the window, facing out, and runs the entire time I am torching to draw fumes away. The wooden enclosure on the table I made when I used to cut stained glass and just started using it for torching. The bottom has metallic things that cover it so I can rest hot glass on it. The wooden sides catch most of the flying and shocky glass which I just ocassionally sweep out into trash can (saves on the carpet scraps I have underneath table and chair!)

Another thing that helped me get better rounded beads, was to get brass sheathed mandrels (only available from CR Loo). These gave me a larger handle for my clumsy fingers to twirl the 1/16th mandrel. A bonus I discovered, is that when the mandrel gets bent (as they will do from the weakening of the metal from being in the flame so much) I can pull out the mandrel from the brass tube enclosing it, reverse the mandrel, and stick it back into the brass sheath thereby getting a new straight mandrel! I assume, but haven't needed to do it yet, that mandrels you make from metal rods obtained from the welding shop, can also be inserted into the brass sheaths.

CHEATING TIPS:

When a bead is lop sided, you can first use heat and gravity to reshape it. Marvering it flatter or round shape, will just squish the glass out creating a bulge and doesn't really move the glass to where it needs to go. (Also, pushing too hard on the bead against the marver usually breaks your bead release). First you reheat the entire bead, then while twirling slowly you concentrate the heat (by hesitating in your twirling) to the area just 1/2 below the bulge to let the heat make that extra glass flow down . This then moves into a slighter bulgy area, you continue doing this, heating bottom half of bulge, and slowly heat and gravity will keep moving the glass until it is evenly distributed around the whole bead. Did you know we use this technique to create a special kind of bead ? Which will be shown below.

Now, if the bulge is on the sides, you can firm up the sides to get a clearly defined area of bulge on the circumference of the bead, by rolling the edges of the bead on the thin side of the marver. Lay the mandrel evenly on the top of the thin side of the marver, move the mandrel closer to the side of the marver till the bead just reaches the marver, and just roll the mandrel. Amazingly enough, you will also see where the bulge is, because the marver is a straight point of reference to the eye so you can actually see where there is too much glass when you are slowly twirling the mandrel. Note- you lose you "dimples" doing this, but in continuing to heat and twirl the bead will resettle the glass and cause it to flow back and give you dimples again.

Another way to take out a bulge lop side, is to move the glass through a raking type process. You can either heat up the bead really hot, and use a tungsten rake or a stringer of the same glass, and rake the bulge slowly down the middle of the bead thereby forcibly moving the glass to other areas! (This is also how we "feather" beads!) This is quicker than gravity, BUT cannot be used except for base bead without decorations (unless you are deliberately making feathers in your bead decoration). Once decoration is on the bead, you have to use gravity method which is what Corina was talking about in her book when she mentioned the filler dots, to prevent distortion of design.

Another method is just to SHAKE the mandrel. Yes, gravity can use some help! Just get the bead hot, and remove from flame with the bulge area on top, and gently shake the mandrel up and down to redistribute glass. Let the sag work for you! This is a fine line to watch, because you don't want to just move the same amount of glass from one side to the other, so you don't want the glass boiling hot (remember white is clear when boiling hot!) When the shift in glass is a small amount, you can just hold the bead out of the flame to let the heat and gravity slightly move the glass (this causes the glass to sink slowly to the bottom and does not break your bead release because the glass is hot and liquid) And when you think enough glass has moved, begin twirling it again to slow the flow. Many times we can center glass by simply moving the bead out of the hole flame and continue to twirl, and then put it back into the flame to heat it up again and then take out of flame to twirl again. Try each different technique to see what works best for you.

You don't need to buy a Smircich tailstock holder, to hold your mandrel while you are twirling your bead, to help you round it out. You can use the handle of your marver to hold the mandrel while you are twirling it. This allows you to rest the mandrel on the metal of the rod handle, I move the mandrel to the edge of the graphite while holding the marver on it's side in my left hand, while twirling the mandrel slowly on the marver rod. This allows you to concentrate on holding your bead/mandrel hand horizontally while you are twirling for stability. This is also great for BIG beads, because after awhile your bead/mandrel hand gets tired and wobbly. A little of the bead release may break off at the end of the mandrel while doing this, but it's no biggie because it is too far up the mandrel to effect the bead.

Then again, if you are feeling defeated, you can just make a bigger bead! Just add extra glass to the bead by smooshing down a heated rod on the slighter side of the bead, or using stringer if the off center is slight. Then start your slow twirling again to heat up the new glass and even out the bugle that was and the bulge that you made with new glass.

Besides ADDING glass to a bead, you can REMOVE glass from a bead as well. This primarily is good for beads that are too big for what you wanted, because in removing glass you usually create an extrusion. I measure my beads with a small caliper, the width and the circumference since most beaders want beads 7-8 mm wide and 10-12 mm circumference. You can really heat up one area of the bead, and use pointed nosed tweezers to remove some of glass. I do this in two steps in order NOT to break the bead release by tugging on glass that isn't hot enough to move. Stick tip of tweezer into bead, and gently pull out about 1/4 inch. Remove tweezers (remember to dip them into water to chill them) , reheat area, and put tweezers back on pulled out area and pull out completely now. You can also use a cold rod of glass touched to a really hot spot on the bead and I sorta skim the bead having the hot glass stick to the cold rod. Later when you use that rod the extra glass will shock off.

Now, when I am making most beads (but not all - like hollow beads) , I just do what I call the DRAG method to get a centered bead. This is completely contrary to what all the books and videos show you. As I am winding glass onto the mandrel, I leave the bead in the flame and I have my rod down towards the bottom of the bead. Both the rod and the bead are getting the same heat. The bead is slowly being twirled as I am adding glass, BUT as I am adding the glass I have the rod slightly into the bead, which creates it's own type of raking of the glass of the bead by dragging the rod through the molten glass ON the mandrel bead. I stay in the middle of the bead to do this. Actually, it's more like I hold the rod of glass in a fixed stationary position, and move the bead on the mandrel into the rod for just the slight amount of pressure. The pressure is adjusted by my left hand holding the mandrel. It's really neat, you actually see little furrows that it creates in the drag on the bead on the mandrel. Because the rod is at the bottom, rather than the top of the bead, it gives you better sight of the bead and a reference to see that the glass distribution is even. The disadvantage in this method, is that you are not adding as much glass at a time as you do the video way - but I feel a centered bead is more important. Another disadvantage is that it creates a wider "footprint" (which can even out your wonky starts!) and the only way to get "dimples" is to add alot of glass to the bead. But if the sides are good, you don't really need dimples. Also when you wind off you leave less glass on the one bead side because it is filling in a furrow!

ENDING

Now, when you think you have a rounded bead, take it out of the flame and continue twirling it slowly for 6-8 seconds at least, to let the bead chill and firm up. You can then twirl the bead, under the table, where you can still see if it has heat in the bead because it will be orangy color until the bead is chilled enough. Then you can look at it, and see what you created OR you can double check if it is centered by this simple process. (After you have made enough beads you won't need to do this because you can FEEL in your hand when it is centered by your twirling).

Place your cooled bead on the mandrel close to the flat side of the marver and start at one end just slowly twirl the mandrel taking your hand off the mandrel. The mandrel with the bead will roll along the length of the horizontally held marver. Don't do this hard enough to spin it off the marver! LOL Remember, even though it is "chilled" it is still very HOT! If it is centered, the bead will continue to roll and the mandrel will get to the point of almost rolling off the marver. If it is not centered, the bead will stop. Where it stops, looking at the bottom of the bead, is where it has too much glass making it off centered. Try another spin to see if if stops again in the same spot. At this point you can mark your bead release with a pencil mark, and reheat bead and try to redistribute glass.
I used to make, and perhaps will once again, make kaleidoscope wheels that had to be centered in order for the wheels to continue rolling after a spin. This is sorta the method I used with them.

I just thought of this, you can check lop sidedness visually using the marver as a reference as well. Holding the marver flat towards you, roll the mandrel evenly on the thin side. The straight line of the marver will help you see, by twirling the bead, if your distribution of glass was lop sided.
All two techniques can be done while the bead is chilled, and before putting into kiln. If you see it's lop sided, just put it back into the flame and work on it some more.

Now last thing, a treat for you! A picture of the deliberately created lop sided beads that make a unique design on beads before you re-center them. I forget what they call this. You make a bead, put dots, squiggles, whatever as decoration on the bead and then deliberately heat one end of the bead alot till the point where it really sags and looks like a big drip! Then using the tip Number 1 the drip is slowly redistributed around the bead. The more you do this, the more it creates swirls (especially at the sides of the bead) until you have swirled it as much as you like and then re-center the bead. In doing this, it does make the bead "footprint" larger, BUT it also will even out wonky sides. Below are two pictures. The pink one (second from left) was a bead with straight lines across the circumference of the bead, the other was done by a dot pattern on bead and then letting the bead dots drip with the heat sag. So keep in mind, that while you want centered beads, the lop sided practice will help you make bead designs as well! BTW if you want to print out the pictures above, without the instructions, I made one large .jpg you can copy and keep at your work bench. HERE is link. It's at 100% so you should not have to resize it.

Copyrighted Feb 6, 2003 by Maureen Kennedy - in case I ever write a book! LOL

I hope to replace some of the lousy drawings with some digital photos soon!

First of all, when you take the bead out of the flame thinking you are done with it, do you continue to twirl it until it sets up hard? If not, the heat that is in the bead will deform the bead with gravity pulling the hotest part of the bead down causing it to be lop sided. If you make a white bead, take it out of the flame and count how long it takes for it to turn back to solid white - at least 6-8 seconds depending upon how big it is. Just hold it and watch it sag! All is not lost though, put it back in the flame and try tips below.
Next, do you turn the mandrel towards you to look at the bead to see if it is centered, before taking it out of the flame to twirl until it is cool? If so, you are sagging again, because you are holding the bead and letting the heated glass settle to the bottom.
A different sag, if you turn the mandrel towards you to look at the bead, and are slight tilting the mandrel up, then the glass flows down and you end up with bead that is lop sided on the side, rather than the bottom like those above.
And lastly, twirling too hard when the bead is very hot, will cause through centrifigcal force, a large amount of glass to move to one side of bead. You need to twirl slowly (this was the second greatest tip for me to get centered beads!) Mark the mandrel with either a scratch or pencil line, so you can see where you start on a twirl. Count slowly like to 5 to make ONE rotation of the bead. If the glass seems to be too hot, because you can see it sagging at the bottom, then either turn the flame down, or move the bead up higher into the flame so it's not melting that fast. More on this further down!
The books tell you to look at the top of the bead to see if it is centered, because too much glass on one side will pop up at your eyes and tell you it's not distributed evenly. That philosophy never worked for me. I look at the sides of the beads. If they are centered the bead (donut type) will be perfectly even on the sides. When a bead is lop sided, there is MORE glass on one area of the bead that causes that area to BULGE out. This can be clearly seen without squinting and trying to line up the top of the bead with something to see if there is too much glass in a area.

When a bead is lop sided, you can first use heat and gravity to reshape it. Marvering it flatter or round shape, will just squish the glass out creating a bulge and doesn't really move the glass to where it needs to go. (Also, pushing too hard on the bead against the marver usually breaks your bead release). First you reheat the entire bead, then while twirling slowly you concentrate the heat (by hesitating in your twirling) to the area just 1/2 below the bulge to let the heat make that extra glass flow down . This then moves into a slighter bulgy area, you continue doing this, heating bottom half of bulge, and slowly heat and gravity will keep moving the glass until it is evenly distributed around the whole bead. Did you know we use this technique to create a special kind of bead ? Which will be shown below.
Now, if the bulge is on the sides, you can firm up the sides to get a clearly defined area of bulge on the circumference of the bead, by rolling the edges of the bead on the thin side of the marver. Lay the mandrel evenly on the top of the thin side of the marver, move the mandrel closer to the side of the marver till the bead just reaches the marver, and just roll the mandrel. Amazingly enough, you will also see where the bulge is, because the marver is a straight point of reference to the eye so you can actually see where there is too much glass when you are slowly twirling the mandrel. Note- you lose you "dimples" doing this, but in continuing to heat and twirl the bead will resettle the glass and cause it to flow back and give you dimples again.
Another way to take out a bulge lop side, is to move the glass through a raking type process. You can either heat up the bead really hot, and use a tungsten rake or a stringer of the same glass, and rake the bulge slowly down the middle of the bead thereby forcibly moving the glass to other areas! (This is also how we "feather" beads!) This is quicker than gravity, BUT cannot be used except for base bead without decorations (unless you are deliberately making feathers in your bead decoration). Once decoration is on the bead, you have to use gravity method which is what Corina was talking about in her book when she mentioned the filler dots, to prevent distortion of design.
Another method is just to SHAKE the mandrel. Yes, gravity can use some help! Just get the bead hot, and remove from flame with the bulge area on top, and gently shake the mandrel up and down to redistribute glass. Let the sag work for you! This is a fine line to watch, because you don't want to just move the same amount of glass from one side to the other, so you don't want the glass boiling hot (remember white is clear when boiling hot!) When the shift in glass is a small amount, you can just hold the bead out of the flame to let the heat and gravity slightly move the glass (this causes the glass to sink slowly to the bottom and does not break your bead release because the glass is hot and liquid) And when you think enough glass has moved, begin twirling it again to slow the flow. Many times we can center glass by simply moving the bead out of the hole flame and continue to twirl, and then put it back into the flame to heat it up again and then take out of flame to twirl again. Try each different technique to see what works best for you.
You don't need to buy a Smircich tailstock holder, to hold your mandrel while you are twirling your bead, to help you round it out. You can use the handle of your marver to hold the mandrel while you are twirling it. This allows you to rest the mandrel on the metal of the rod handle, I move the mandrel to the edge of the graphite while holding the marver on it's side in my left hand, while twirling the mandrel slowly on the marver rod. This allows you to concentrate on holding your bead/mandrel hand horizontally while you are twirling for stability. This is also great for BIG beads, because after awhile your bead/mandrel hand gets tired and wobbly. A little of the bead release may break off at the end of the mandrel while doing this, but it's no biggie because it is too far up the mandrel to effect the bead.
Then again, if you are feeling defeated, you can just make a bigger bead! Just add extra glass to the bead by smooshing down a heated rod on the slighter side of the bead, or using stringer if the off center is slight. Then start your slow twirling again to heat up the new glass and even out the bugle that was and the bulge that you made with new glass.
Besides ADDING glass to a bead, you can REMOVE glass from a bead as well. This primarily is good for beads that are too big for what you wanted, because in removing glass you usually create an extrusion. I measure my beads with a small caliper, the width and the circumference since most beaders want beads 7-8 mm wide and 10-12 mm circumference. You can really heat up one area of the bead, and use pointed nosed tweezers to remove some of glass. I do this in two steps in order NOT to break the bead release by tugging on glass that isn't hot enough to move. Stick tip of tweezer into bead, and gently pull out about 1/4 inch. Remove tweezers (remember to dip them into water to chill them) , reheat area, and put tweezers back on pulled out area and pull out completely now. You can also use a cold rod of glass touched to a really hot spot on the bead and I sorta skim the bead having the hot glass stick to the cold rod. Later when you use that rod the extra glass will shock off.
Now, when I am making most beads (but not all - like hollow beads) , I just do what I call the DRAG method to get a centered bead. This is completely contrary to what all the books and videos show you. As I am winding glass onto the mandrel, I leave the bead in the flame and I have my rod down towards the bottom of the bead. Both the rod and the bead are getting the same heat. The bead is slowly being twirled as I am adding glass, BUT as I am adding the glass I have the rod slightly into the bead, which creates it's own type of raking of the glass of the bead by dragging the rod through the molten glass ON the mandrel bead. I stay in the middle of the bead to do this. Actually, it's more like I hold the rod of glass in a fixed stationary position, and move the bead on the mandrel into the rod for just the slight amount of pressure. The pressure is adjusted by my left hand holding the mandrel. It's really neat, you actually see little furrows that it creates in the drag on the bead on the mandrel. Because the rod is at the bottom, rather than the top of the bead, it gives you better sight of the bead and a reference to see that the glass distribution is even. The disadvantage in this method, is that you are not adding as much glass at a time as you do the video way - but I feel a centered bead is more important. Another disadvantage is that it creates a wider "footprint" (which can even out your wonky starts!) and the only way to get "dimples" is to add alot of glass to the bead. But if the sides are good, you don't really need dimples. Also when you wind off you leave less glass on the one bead side because it is filling in a furrow!