I burn through 3/32″ mandrels routinely when working on bigger/more complex beads or when trying to do two or three basics on a single rod. I can even burn through a 1/8″ mandrel without any real problem. I haven’t quite burned through a 5/32″ mandrel (the ones I use for Pandora/Troll type beads) but I’ve come unnervingly close.

Trying to make small beads with small holes for earrings and such calls for a 1/16″ mandrel. With ordinary mandrels they are an exercise in futility for me. Fifteen seconds in the flame and POOF! PLOP! There’s my molten glass on the tabletop with a mandrel bit sticking out each end, destined only for a watery grave.

Then AuraLens came out with their “Almost Indestructable Mandrels” in a variety of sizes, including that impossible 1/16″ size AND two even tinier sizes. Their website states “Imagine being able to make three or more borosilicate beads on a mandrel and not having the mandrel melt from excessive heat.”

“Suuuuure you can,” said my Inner Skeptic.

I asked Mike Aurelius if that claim was for real. He assured me it was, so I promptly ordered three dozen 1/16″ Almost Indestructible Mandrels. I don’t make tiny beads every session, so it’s taken me a while to really give them a workover.

The verdict from here? “Almost” is the operative word. I’ve destroyed several of them so far, but I’ve had to work at it harder, quite a bit harder, than with regular mandrels. If I use a little common sense and turn my flame down a bit (which I should do for the smaller beads anyway), I really can make three nicely shaped 9-10mm or so earring beads on one mandrel and not melt through it. For me, they are worth it. If you find yourself being a mandrel-killer, you may want to
check them out yourself.

ALMOST Indestructable Mandrels is a post from: Art of the Firebird. Some Rights Reserved. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Also, I love my two Zoozii’s XXL presses (the Kalera XXL and the Straight-Sided Lentil SSL), but boy are they a headache to make anything with in borosilicate glass with my smallish torch! I made ONE Kalera XXL last night, and no matter what I did I could not quite get it pressed down all the way. It still looks good but it’s a little fatter than it’s supposed to be and the corners aren’t nice and crisp. That’s not enough to send me back to soft glass, though!

This weekend has to be my last big bead-making push for a bit, since I’ll be in Roanoke next weekend. I wish I was going to have more new items for week after next’s show, but it’s just not going to happen. I’ll have to ponder some interesting color combinations to work with over the weekend — any ideas?

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Since I was so uninspired, I thought I’d practice using my crystal press, which has been challenging me ever since I got it. It makes beautiful beads WHEN you can get it to work right. However, it is extremely sensitive to the amount of glass you use as well as how that glass is placed. That makes it hard to get both a nice shape around the middle, with well-defined edges and points, and nice ends that are even and smooth instead of lopsided and sharp. It’s even more of a challenge if you want encased crystals, since keeping the core from bleeding out the ends requires something I haven’t discovered yet.

At least tomorrow is Thursday — shorter class day (with an interesting topic for once), dance class in the evening, and a three-day weekend.

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I’m planning to keep finished pieces, including earrings and the majority of the pendants, at 1000 Markets.? ArtFire will be for my bead sets, and for the plain focal beads. The handbound books? I’m not sure where I’m going to put them yet. I may spread them out and see what happens.

Then, if ArtFire takes off at all, that will be a sign to shut down the Etsy shop. I have NOT been happy with Etsy. Their setup encourages sellers to “game” the system to try to get exposure, and I have neither time nor inclination for that. Plus it’s becoming more and more clear that Etsy doesn’t really give a rat’s ass about their sellers, not to mention that I have been disgusted with their pretentious posturing more than once.

So pop on over and visit Art of the Firebird at ArtFire. As of right now there’s only one item in there, but tomorrow and Monday I’ll be photographing and stocking to get more available.? And, of course, if you follow me on Twitter, you’ll get tweets when I add new items (but I promise I won’t spam you with them).

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Even if the bead release survives the initial heating, there’s a good chance that as I start shaping and pressing and reheating the bead it will either flake off the rod (often landing in the molten glass just where I don’t want it) or break loose UNDER the glass, leaving me with a free-spinning blob that won’t stay still to be shaped into a bead. If I try using one of the “super-holding” bead releases instead, the challenge comes when trying to remove the bead from the mandrel after annealing, and then in cleaning the bead release off the bead — dirty beads being a big no-no!

Trying to make boro beads on a 1/16″ mandrel to get the tiny holes so helpful when making earrings wasn’t something I considered at all until Mike Aurelius of Auralens started selling high-temperature steel mandrels. He claimed, when I asked, that the 1/16″ size would indeed hold up to boro work or I could have my money back.

At about the same time, I met John and Tara Roberts at the Atlanta Bead Extravaganza. John had reached the same conclusion about bead release as I and several others — bead releases formulated and tested in the Desert Southwest, or even the Pacific Northwest, just aren’t going to work well in the hot, humid Southeast.? John, though, had gone further and developed his own formula especially for this climate. He gave every lampworking vendor at the ABE a sample bottle and asked us all to test it out and see how it worked for us.

Finally I’ve gotten a chance to test both Mike’s mandrels and John’s bead release. Both are living up to their claims rather well so far!

I did manage to burn through the first of Mike’s mandrels that I tried, but let’s face it, I was TRYING to burn through it. Yes, I succeeded, but it took some work to do so! Since that one, I’ve taken reasonable care with teeny beads on those skinny skinny mandrels and have had no problems.

John’s bead release will eventually flake with enough hard pressing, but again, that’s real abuse. By and large it holds the glass very well without cracking and flaking at the first sign of heat and pressure like so many of the other formulas. The beads are coming right off the mandrels with just a little soak beforehand, and the bead poop cleans out of the holes with just a quick pass or two of my diamond-tip reamer in my mini-Dremel.? So far I’d say it deserves its name of “Best Bead Release.”

I’ll be getting more of both these products when I run low!

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