There are lots of books on the market which will help you to learn how to make beads. Here’s some of what you will find in them, plus some hints/tips of my own.
Safety First
You are working with things that have the potential to cause injury. Yes, even serious injury if sufficient care is not taken. (Do a search for lampworking injuries and you will find a heap of safety information to peruse at your leisure.) Fire, glass and fumes can all play havoc with our health and the health of our loved ones, so in my book safety is of the utmost importance. If you are thinking about setting up an area to make beads, take a good look around and make sure that you choose a place that is safe, inaccessible to small children, and please, definitely not near where you prepare food.
Necessary Safety Requirements
A fire extinguisher. Safety glasses – AUR-92, Didymium or Rose Didymium glasses – will protect your eyes and also allow you to see the colours of the glass clearly without the soda flare of the flame. At the absolute minimum, some form of safety glasses must be worn to protect your eyes from flying glass. A cup of water to cool down hot tools, and to dip your fingers in if they get burned. An Aloe Vera plant nearby is handy, plus be sure to have some Solisite or similar in your medicine cabinet. I know most of us who have been making beads for quite a while always joke about “getting the bead finished first” before treating any burns, but it is important to treat them ASAP. Wear natural fibres when working and try to cover up as much as is reasonably possible. I have some nice little brown marks on my chest and forearms courtesy of flying glass. Wear closed shoes.
Ventilation
Breathing keeps us alive, so good ventilation is vital if we want to continue having maximum use of our lungs. You need to have some fresh air coming in, preferably from behind you, and a extractor fan of some kind in front of you to pull any fumes away from your face. Even a range hood or at least a fan placed backwards in a window to draw the fumes from the gas and the glass away from you can work as an interim until you can organise your proper setup.
If you are going to be using a duel fuel torch or working with things like silver leaf/foil, then a proper extractor fan is an absolute must. It needs to be able to draw a certain amount of air for the kind of torch you are using and the size of the room you are working in. There are some good diagrams on the web of how to set up your studio for optimal and recommended ventilation. Again, do a search for “lampworking ventilation setups” or similar and you will find a heap of great resources.
Respirators are also necessary if you are going to be using metals such as silver, gold or copper leaf, foil or wire in your beads, or any enamels, Pixie Dust and the like. You can buy sufficient respirators from most hardware stores. Buy the best that you can afford and make sure the filters are suitable for the type of environment you are using it in. i.e. fumes/vapour/dusts.
Ok, now on to the fun part…
What is Lampworking?
Early bead makers used the flame of an oil lamp to melt their glass which is how the term lampwork, or flamework came into being. These days lampworkers use either single fuel torches such as the Hot Head – which use propane or Mapp gas only, or dual fuel torches such as the Minor Burner – which use both propane and oxygen. There are a lot of different dual fuel torches on the market today. The combination of gas and oxygen produces a hotter flame and therefore cuts down on the time it takes to make each bead.
Glass Rods
Glass rods come in a range of colours and Coefficient of Expansion – COE for short. Glass expands when it gets hot and contracts when it cools, so the COE is the decider on what makes two different types of glass compatible or not. As an example to try to explain COE, I’ll use just three different types of glass. They are: Effetre – 104 COE, Bullseye – 90 COE, and Gaffer – 96 COE. As each of these glasses expand and contract at different rates, that means that if you mix two of these glasses together, the molecules within them are going to be moving at different rates and therefore not able to settle into a cohesive state together. There is always going to be stress between where the two glasses meet. It is best to only mix glass that has the same COE, but there is an exception… You can place small amounts of another COE on the outside of the bead. i.e. a bead made with 104 COE, Effetre for example, can have a small amount, ie 5% of the surface area covered with 96 COE frit or stringer work. These beads should not be encased. If greater quantities of glass of different COEs are mixed together, the stress that forms between the area where these two glasses meet will cause the bead to crack or break apart after it has cooled. It might not happen overnight, but it will happen at some stage – a couple of days, a couple of months, even a year down the track…
Bead Release
Each bead is created on a stainless steel mandrel, which has been coated in bead release. (I use 316L grade stainless steel Tig welding rods.) Bead release is a combination of powdered ingredients, such as Kaolin, Aluminum Hydrate and sometimes even graphite or clay, mixed with water to give a cream like consistency. The mandrels are dipped into the release and allowed to dry before use. Bead release is necessary to enable the finished bead to be removed from the mandrel.
Lampworking Tools
Various tools can be used to manipulate the glass while it is soft. Flattening, poking, rolling, pushing and pulling’dragging are some of the techniques that can alter the shape of the bead or the design on a bead. There are lots of tools on the market that are purpose made for lampworkers. Graphite blocks, stainless steel or Tungsten picks or pokers, brass rollers etc. Virtually anything that is heat resistant can be used – the graphite, stainless steel and brass are the common metals used by most.
Making a Bead
The glass rods are melted one at a time in the torch flame and wrapped around the coated mandrel to form the bead. The mandrel must be constantly rotated to keep the hot glass centered and evenly heated. Further additions of other colours are applied to the base bead to make designs and patterns. The tools are then used to manipulate the glass, ie, dots placed as flower petals can have the outside edges pulled with a metal pick to make them pointy.
Annealing
When you are happy with your bead, you need to anneal it so that it stays strong. There are two ways to anneal beads. One way is to place the bead directly from the flame into an already hot kiln. There the bead will ‘soak’ at the recommended temperature for the particular glass that you have used for a recommended amount of time. After this time, the kiln will slowly ramp down until it can be turned off and allowed to return to room temperature. Usually overnight. The bead needs to be around room temperature before it can be removed from the kiln.
The other method is “batch annealing”. With this method, the finished bead is rotated slowly higher and higher up through the flame until the inner and the outer temperatures of the bead are equalised. This prevents the bead from cracking instantly. The bead is then immediately placed into either a pot of Vermiculite or between two sheets of Fibre Blanket. These beads need to stay put until cold. Once cold, the bead/s can then be placed into a cold kiln and run through the recommended annealing cycle for the type of glass you have used. (Different COE’s have different recommended annealing temperatures. Again, a search online will bring up the different recommendations.)
Cleaning
Once the beads have been annealed, they need to have the bead release cleaned out of them. As bead release is originally made from powders, once it is dry, it goes back to being powdery. (If you have ever bought cheap lampwork beads from China or similar, you will notice that they still have this powdery residue in the holes.) This dry release is dusty, and therefore a danger to your lungs, so do not breathe it in. Place the beads in water and use a bead reamer, or a wire pipe cleaner to clean the release out. Don’t pour the water down your drain as it will eventually clog them up. I empty my water out onto a section of my garden. Cleaning under water has a twofold advantage. I use a diamond bit motorised bead reamer and using it under water ensures it does not wear out as quickly, and more importantly, dust particles are prevented from becoming airborne.
Rince your cleaned beads in clean water and allow them to dry. Your beads are now ready to be turned into a wonderful piece of jewellery.
Beadmaking Hints & Tips
A dark background behind your flame will help you to be able to see the bead clearly.
Position your glass rods so that they cannot roll off the table and into your lap.
When you put a rod down, always place it so that the hot end is not likely to be picked up by mistake. Glass stays hot for longer than you think.
Your torch must be secured firmly to your workbench.
A chair with wheels will allow you to make a quick exit if you accidentally drop a hot piece of glass or equipment in your lap.
If you have made it all the way to here, you’re obviously serious about things, so well done. I hope this has been on some help to you. Please feel free to email me with any further questions you have, or to let me know if I have made an error anywhere…
It’s a fun art form. Lots to learn and understand I know, but it’s worth it.