Bead, Hollow Blue w/Melted Twistie LBF20-4366

This bead measures approximately 21 mm x 14 mm, (flattened) and was wound on a 3/32 mandrel.  

I use 104 COE glass – Effetre (formerly Moretti), Lausha, Messy, and assorted silver reactives like TAG and Double Helix. I work on a Minor torch and use either my Arrow Springs A-18 kiln or my Toolbox kiln. All my beads are properly annealed in a digitally controlled kiln, and then cleaned thoroughly from bead release using specially designed reamers in my Foredom. 

HOLLOW BEADS

Hollow beads are exactly what they sound like. Instead of being a solid little piece of glass with a hole in the middle, it’s a shaped shell around air. Most of the time hollow beads are round, but they can take any shape the maker can form. I make hollows in one of 3 ways:

1)The first way I learned was to start two disks around a mandrel and gradually build them toward one another until they were joined. Heat, shape and into the kiln. This is the way I did it for years.

2) Then, some genius came up with a hollow bead mandrel. Same idea, but the mandrel itself is a tube with a hole in the side of it. Build the 2 disks, join, but then blow it. The result is a much finer bead, but the hole is a bit larger.

3)The third way is to blow it entirely, like a vessel or ornament, off the end of a blow tube. Once you get it the way you want it, you poke a hole in the opposite end of where it’s attached to the blow tube, then grab it, break it off and fire the end. A lot harder, but the plus is you can get a lot larger and do more extensive decorating.

SRA #C11 The photos are of the actual bead(s) listed here