New year, new bead holes

I know I'm a bit late with the new year greetings but happy 2025 to you!

January is such a nothingy time. I always get a 'new year, same old same old' feeling with it rather than a 'new beginnings and fresh page' one. I do like the weather of it, though. It's frosty and crisp here today and when I popped to the shop for onions earlier I felt like I could walk for miles in the icy-cold fresh air, but alas, laundry, hoovering and bead stuff needs to be done.

Yesterday was my first day back in the shed. I've been very taken with the beads with smaller holes I made at the end of last year so I decided to see if I could make my usual sort of beads on the 1mm mandrels too. You might think it's just the same but the diameter of the mandrel greatly influences the shape that the bead naturally wants to be. A 4mm or 5mm mandrel will give you a more donut-shaped bead and a 2.5mm or 1.6mm one will result in a fatter donut shape. The 1mm mandrel gives you a much rounder bead. It's not spherical but it's too wide to be classed as a donut. This gives you slightly more surface area to decorate so things like polka dot patterns and scrollwork need to be adjusted slightly. Yesterday I just stuck with spotty beads while I worked out what size the core needed to be and how much encasing glass I needed to add to get a consistent size and shape while maintaining the all-important not-at-all-sharp bead hole surrounds. I've got it sussed so tomorrow I'll faff with other designs.

The 1mm mandrels are not easy to work with. They have a tendency to boing about and I melted through a couple so I had to adjust where I was working in the flame. Smaller mandrels result in smaller beads so these are about 10.5mm diameter as opposed to my usual 12mm to 13mm, but that's fine by me because I favour little beads.

Cleaning the beads is a bit more tricky too. It's near-on impossible to take them off the mandrels without bending them so I've been nipping the bent ends off when I've removed the beads. A bend in a mandrel is a wonk-maker, and in a 1mm mandrel it's also a weak point that can be easily melted through. Using the Dremel to clean out the bead release requires more precision so I have to really concentrate so that I don't slip with the reamer bit and scratch the bead surface with it.

So what are the bonuses of a smaller bead hole? The main one is that the beads 'sit' better when threaded on wire, thread or headpins. Seed beads snug up nicely to them too.

All of this doesn't mean I'm abandoning my usual 1.6mm mandrels. I just want to see what I can achieve with the smaller bore bead holes.

And speaking of bore, I think I've wanged on quite enough about mandrels and bead holes now. Honestly, if you're still reading, well done. I can't think that this is interesting in the slightest.

If you like the spotty beads in this post, they're available in my shop. I've got two strands of nine beads for sale and I can tumble-etch them for you at no extra cost. They'd look great etched because of their icy colours. Oh yeah, I forgot the colours. In this case they are CiM Foam encased with Effetre Pale Aquamarine 038 with spots in Effetre White 204.

Now it's time for me to sort that laundry and hoovering. I hope the rest of your Wednesday is good. See you later!

Dip & Fire 'Tuffy' Bead Release

For years I've sworn by Foster Fire bead release but it's been harder and harder to get in the UK and getting it sent from America can be pretty expensive. A couple of months back I desperately needed some bead release and the UK place I usually get my Foster Fire didn't have any so I ended up getting a bag of Dip & Fire 'Tuffy'.

Unlike a lot of bead releases, you buy this as a 200g bag of powder as opposed to a bottled liquid. This makes it lighter and cheaper to post. You then mix the powder with water and ta-dah! you've got bead release.

When I got my first lot of Tuffy I stuck to the instructions (because I'm a 'stick to the recipe first and then go off road next time' kind of person) and added the full 170ml of water which was fine but I do like my bead release to be a bit thick. It soon thickened up after a week or so, but I mixed the second lot that I've just got with 150ml of water and the release is just right for me.

I tipped my Tuffy powder into a big empty pickled red cabbage jar (I love pickled red cabbage, especially with salad cream) and added the 150ml of cold water. I put the lid on and went full-on Tom Cruise in Cocktail and shaky-shaky-shook it until it was mixed. I then poured, and scraped out with an old spatula, the mixed bead release into a smaller glass jar. This one is about the size of an apple or cranberry sauce jar and it's filled to the top.

Then of course I set about dipping my mandrels. Such a tedious job. As you can see in this GIF, I do four at a time to speed up the time-eating process of it all.

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As for the bead release's performance - it's great. The Tuffy release gives a nice smooth mandrel coating. I've been using Tuffy for a couple of months now and in that time I've done hollow vessels, sculptural flowers, and some pretty time-intensive beads like implosions and encased 'Scales' beads. All of those can put stress on the bead release but it's not cracked or flaked on the mandrel unless I've done something daft like knocked it hard with a brass tool or over-mashed and actually pulled the glass. That's bad beadmaking, not bad bead release.

It also cleans out of the beads really well. I use a Dremel for cleaning my beads. Tuffy contains no free crystalline silica which means it doesn't have the same silicosis-related health hazards as other bead releases. Bonus!

Tuffnell Glass sell Dip & Fire 'Tuffy' bead release and it's priced at £8.00 per 200g bag.

Making Mandrels

It got to the point this morning where I was down to about ten mandrels. After each bead-cleaning session I clean and dry the mandrels and throw away any bent ones and eventually they dwindle away and then it's time to make some more. I haven't bought ready-made mandrels for at least four years. Instead I cut up stainless steel welding rods which saves so much money you wouldn't believe it. I have a five kilo tube of ESAB 1.6mm rods and one of 2.4mm rods. I mainly use the 1.6mm ones for my beadmaking. One tube of welding rods goes a long way. You can get four mandrels out of one rod. As I say, I've had these tubes of rods for over four years and I'm only two thirds of the way through the smaller ones.

You don't have to buy a five kilo tube - some places sell the rods by the kilo or less. It may be worth going into your local welding supplies place and asking them about buying some. You will save so much money in the long run. Here are the labels off my rod tubes - print the picture out and take it along with you :

Please click here for a list of ESAB dealers and maybe you can find one near you.

I have a pair of cutters (the make is Facom) that cut the 1.6mm rods quite happily. They do cut the 2.4mm ones too but you need a bit more grunt - I use two hands. Or if I'm feeling particlualry feeble I get Dad to cut them for me!

After I've cut up my welding rods into mandrel-sized lengths I sand the ends of them on some heavy-duty sandpaper to take off any sharp bits and then I'm left with a bunch of shiny new mandrels!