Glass Melting for Beads

Video Transcript

"The first thing we need to look at is actually getting the glass melted before we start making beads. You need to be very careful when you melt glass because if you heat glass up too quickly it's just like dropping an ice cube into a hot glass of tea, it will shatter very quickly; it's called thermo-shocking. So with a piece of glass with a diameter this large you want to make sure that you introduce it into the flame very, very slowly, and you start at the back end of the flame, about six inches out from the head of the torch. So remember, the thicker the diameter of your glass, the more slowly you're going to have to introduce it to the flame. As this glass starts to heat up and gets to the point that it's malleable enough to work, it'll start to get an orange glow to the tip. As the orange increases going down the tube you can then bring the glass closer and closer to the head of the torch. You never want to work closer than about two inches to the head of the torch. So now you can begin to see the tip is orange, you introduce more of the glass, and as you want to make sure that as you're heating the glass you keep rotating the rod in your hand. As you continue to heat, the orange color will spread, and eventually the glass is going to become the consistency of warm honey, and it's going to start to droop when you hold the rod still. When you have this droop, it's finally time to work your glass."