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ALMOST Indestructable Mandrels">ALMOST Indestructable Mandrels

November 7, 2009 in Lampworking & Glass by Julia | 5 comments

I work most­ly­with borosil­i­cate glass (bet­ter known as Pyrex), which tends to make me a mandrel-killer. These man­drels are stain­less steel TIG weld­ing rods so are meant to han­dle heat…just not the kind of heat I need to make that glass MOVE where and how it’s sup­posed to move.

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.

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Running a Really Small Business

November 6, 2009 in Business, Cat Comments by Julia | 6 comments

One thing I keep research­ing is man­ag­ing a really, really small busi­ness like Art of the Fire­bird. Heaven knows there’s a lot of infor­ma­tion out there about small busi­nesses, but so much of it is geared toward either peo­ple who want to be con­sul­tants of some sort, toward peo­ple who are open­ing brick-and-mortar retail, or toward peo­ple who are eBay-ing. Even the infor­ma­tion for artists is mostly geared for peo­ple either doing the “show cir­cuit” or try­ing to get into galleries.

What does Art of the Fire­bird require?

  1. Prod­uct. I think I’ve got mak­ing prod­uct down, more or less. I get my torch time in, and make jew­elry in the odd min­utes here and there. That’s the fun part, after all!
  2. Inven­tory man­age­ment. I’m get­ting there. I’ve got the tool I need set up for fin­ished prod­uct, but I really need to do a bet­ter job of track­ing the glass, at least, so I don’t over­buy some col­ors & find myself with­out others.
  3. Local shows. Down the Street Bead Shows are doing well enough for us for the beads & such, but it would be nice to find a cou­ple of “fin­ished prod­uct” shows that would be a good fit for Andrea and me. I don’t just want to blindly apply to some, though, which means research, which means time!
  4. Pho­tograph­ing prod­uct. Pain in the ass task! Even though I have the pho­tog­ra­phy cor­ner set up more or less per­ma­nently, the setup needs tweak­ing (light­ing is not what it should be). I’d also far rather melt glass than shoot pho­tos! If I’m going to sell online, though, it’s critical.
  5. “Stock­ing” the online stores. Well, that depends on get­ting the pho­tog­ra­phy done and prod­ucts inven­to­ried. Once those get done, adding items to Art­Fire and 1000 Mar­kets is pretty easy. I keep won­der­ing if there is any point in try­ing to have a pres­ence on any other online venues…and if it’s worth the time.
  6. Mar­ket­ing. EWWW!!! HELP!!!! THIS is where I need a guide­book for my type of busi­ness. Hon­estly, I just don’t know what the hell to do here!
  7. Account­ing. What I know about account­ing is this: money comes in, pauses briefly, and goes back
    out. I tried Quick­Books and it’s big-time overkill for me. Isn’t there a sim­ple, easy-to-understand account­ing setup or tool out there somewhere?
  8. Generic other stuff. You know, pack­ing and ship­ping online sales, restock­ing sup­plies, mak­ing sure all the var­i­ous forms get filled out & sub­mit­ted in a timely man­ner every year, redo­ing our show dis­play every time we do a show (it seems), and a zil­lion other things that aren’t com­ing to mind right now.

At least I don’t have to deal with stuff like, say, pay­roll! Sarah, Dono­van, and Mr. Boots work for Gree­nies, after all.

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& working BIG">Crystals & working BIG

November 5, 2009 in Lampworking & Glass by Julia | 2 comments

Last night’s crystal-shaped beads were more suc­cess­ful than they’ve been in the past. Def­i­nitely I don’t need to be mak­ing encased crys­tals until I get the unen­cased ones down, though! These also look bet­ter in lighter col­ors, and in transparent/translucent colors.

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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Mandrels and Bead Release

January 2, 2009 in Lampworking & Glass by Julia | 1 comment

As a boro glass bead­maker, I’m prone to push­ing my “con­sum­ables” to the limit and beyond. Man­drels and bead release both take a lot of abuse at my hands. It’s no trou­ble at all to melt through a 3/32″ stain­less steel weld­ing rod as I smooth out the glass I just wound onto it…that is, if the bead release on that man­drel hasn’t already cracked and bro­ken off in the ini­tial heating.

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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Christmas Presents

December 26, 2008 in Miscellaneous by Julia | No comments

DH and I don’t make a big huge deal out of Stuff as pos­si­ble for Christ­mas, since we pretty much have every­thing we want/need any­way, and if we don’t we get it for our­selves if we really want it. My fam­ily has got­ten so darn big (par­ents, five kids plus spouses, eleven grand­kids) that the sib­lings decided no presents for each other or for nieces/nephews. I do still bake a pound cake loaf for every fam­ily, though!

Still, there’s a few Christ­mas presents hang­ing around.

DH wanted nunchucks, now that he’s a black belt. So I got him nunchucks, plus a cou­ple of small tool kits (ratch­et­ing screwdriver/bits and socket driver/sockets) and some new t-shirts. He sur­prised me with the pair of boots I had been drool­ing over for a year in the National Geo­graphic cat­a­log but wouldn’t buy for myself because they cost way too much (mine are black, though):
Image

My son got me a copy of Mas­ters: Glass Beads, full of eye candy to drool over. He’d “wrapped” our presents each in a bag from Patag­o­nia, which will be just as val­ued? as the presents them­selves (DH promptly stored his nunchucks in his). Then my par­ents gave me a clamp-on mag­ni­fy­ing lamp, which I hadn’t real­ized I wanted/NEEDED until the Cyn­thia Rut­ledge class a cou­ple of weeks ago, when it was clear that my eyes aren’t able to see seed beads as well as I’d like! So I’m quite happy.

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