Torch Lighting for Glass Beads

Series Summary

Jewelry has been worn by men and women for centuries, dating back to the Cro-Magnons over forty thousand years ago. Back then, jewelry was made crudely from bone, teeth, and stone that hung from strings. Of course, the art of jewelry making has evolved into a fine art since the ancient Egyptians started working with precious materials like gold and gems. Social status could be denoted by jewelry until the sought after materials were more readily available to the common folk. Today, jewelry is a form of personal expression, ranging from the traditional precious metals to plastics and glass. Creating glass beads for jewelry making involves melting glass at extremely high temperatures. In this free jewelry making video series, a glass expert will demonstrate the necessary preproduction work you'll need to master before making beads. Learn how to safely handle your equipment, how to light and extinguish a torch, and how to heat glass slowly and evenly. Use these methods to start creating your very own glass jewelry.

Video Transcript

"The first thing I'm going to show you is how to go about lighting a torch. What you need to do is make sure that you have your propane tank set to five, five pressure per square inch and your oxygen tank set to twenty. And, then, next step, very important is your safety glasses. Now, when you go and light your torch, you need to remember the order in which you open the hoses. The first hose that you open is the propane hose and the second hose you open is the oxygen hose. And, when you shut off the torch, you shut off the oxygen first and you shut off the propane second and actually that spells "poop", if you remember that you can keep yourself, from lighting yourself on fire. So, we're going to turn on the propane, just a little bit till you hear it hissing. And, I choose to use matches when lighting my torch, instead of a striker or lighter. There you go. So, now we have a nice propane flame. You're going to tone that down just a little bit and you're going to add oxygen very slowly. Now, your goal in this is to get a flame that we are going to call a neutral flame. Where the candles on the torch are about a quarter of an inch and you also should not be hearing any hissing noises from the oxygen. This right here is a neutral flame, it has an equal amount of propane and an equal amount of oxygen. This is the flame that you'll be working in, for most of your work. The next thing I'm going to show you is a reducing flame which is also called "The Dragon's breath" flame. It is when you turn the propane up very high and the oxygen down low and it looks like dragon's breath. This is a technique that you use when you want to do fuming and working with some metals. The other type of flame you're going to want to know is an oxidizing flame, you'll turn your oxygen way up and you'll hear a very quiet hiss. This oxidizing flame will bring out some of the colors in your glass, it'll also help glass spread out across the surface. It's especially used when using intense black"