A Bead by Any Other Name… Curious about how my glass beads are made? Essentially, I melt a glass rod in a flame and wrap the molten glass around a mandrel, or steel rod. The end of the mandrel is dipped in bead release, a wet clay slurry that prevents the glass from sticking permanently to the rod. Once the glass reaches 1400 degrees, it becomes molten and “workable”, similar to the consistency of honey. At this point, I begin to slowly twirl the rod, continuously wrapping the glass around as I go. Learning to control the glass is probably the single most important element of flameworking. When the bead is formed, it can be decorated using stringer (thin glass rods that can be controlled like a paint brush) to form dots, lines, swirls and a number of other interesting patterns. There are also a variety of other things in the “decorating palate” that can be used: gold and silver foil, raku (glass that takes on a mottled or metallic appearance when it reacts in the flame), pixie dust (fine powder that adds sparkle and a luster to the bead), aventurine (a mineral that gives a gold-flecked appearance to the glass), baking soda (yes, baking soda! It gives the bead a matte, rough surface), etching cream (gives the bead a satin finish), fine silver wire, and many others. I also use a number of tools to shape my bead: a tungsten pick can be used to create bubbles under the surface of the bead or can be raked between sunken dots to create hearts or feathering), flat or grooved graphite marvers and paddles can be used to shape the bead into cubes, tubes, bicones, barrels, and to provide an interesting texture. A bead also can be encased with clear or translucent glass to magnify and intensify the underlying design. The key thing to remember is while all this fancy decorating is occurring, the bead must be kept warm or it will crack. When the bead is finished, it is put into the kiln for about 6 hours where it undergoes a gradual cooling, starting at around 940 degrees. This prevents stress and thermal shock, which can cause the bead to break. (Kind of a neat little flashback for me, because in my “former life” I worked in a genetics lab doing polymerase chain reactions...but that’s an entirely different story…) Depending on the complexity of the design, it can take as little as 10 minutes for me to complete a bead, and as long as 30 minutes.
