Rounding a Glass Bead

Video Transcript

"All right, in our last step what we did is we used a dental paddle to go ahead and push that clear glass toward the mandrel. What you're going to do in this step is heat the entire bead, the clear glass and that black base bead both, and you're going to use the heat and the gravity to shape that bead back into a round bead. What you might want to do is tilt it one way to get a little more to flow to the left, or tilt it another way to get a little more to flow to the right. And remember, you want to keep your mandrel rotating the entire time. Because of its gravitational pull glass wants to be round when it's hot, so if you can keep turning at a steady level your bead will eventually round out without using any kind of tools in order to shape it. As it's starting to get the shape you want, you want to start pulling it out of the flame, you want to get rid of that bright orange glow. You want to do it very slowly. Remember, if glass heats up or cools too softly it can crack."