 |
|
|
|
|
|
Q - How do I know how big I should make my bead before pressing it? A – Mostly I would say it’s experience. You might have to accept a few “bad beads” before you get the hang of it. And “bad beads” is relative, even if it didn’t turn into a perfect lentil, most of the time you will still get something usable. The two ways in which you can go wrong is either not having enough glass to fill the mold, or having too much and the glass squeezes out of the edges. This happens a lot to people who are used to winding the glass onto itself to shape their beads, thus ending up with a more donut shaped bead. Donut shaped beads are a lot harder to “lentilize” – you will end up with a bead that is more ovalish, and not round, like a perfect lentil. Start changing the way you apply the glass to the mandrel. Instead of adding it on top of itself (or as a disk, and then melting it flat), try to wind the glass on from left to right, and then going back and forth to get the heights of the bead. Lentil molds tend to squish the glass out perpendicular to the mandrel. This means that you will have to make your bead almost as wide as the mold you are trying to fill. The HEIGHTS of the initial bead you made depends greatly on the size of the lentil mold. As a general rule, the SMALLER the mold, the rounder your bead can be. The LARGER your mold gets, the flatter your initial bead should be – the 7/8 inch lentil takes a more football shaped bead, so do the 1 ½ inch molds. All the x-s molds take almost perfectly round beads. If you want to be very scientific about this, you can take some playdough and push it into the mold. Start out with a relatively large ball of dough, and then keep taking it away until you have the right amount. Then take it out of the mold, roll it into a ball, about the width of the mold, minus the indentations for the mandrel – and push it onto the size mandrel you are using. This is your “model amount”. Q – How hot should the bead be before pressing it? A – Again, experience will teach you quickly, if the bead is too hot when you place it into the bottom mold, the glass will droop and chances are that your lentil will end up lopsided, because you placed a lopsided bead into the mold, so you were out of luck to begin with. The bead has to be cool enough to KEEP ITS SHAPE when you place it into the bottom mold. On the other hand, if you let it get too cold, it will be too stiff to successfully smash, and you end up with a fat lentil without a crisp edge. To avoid this, make sure that you place the mold very close to the torch, so you don’t lose any time from the flame to find the mold….but keep rotating it after taking it out of your flame, having your eye on the bead at all times, making sure that it stays centered….then place it into the mold you want to use, just set it into the mold (don’t PRESS it into the bottom part of the mold) – then quickly push down with the top part and take it off immediately. The actual smashing process should not take longer than about 1 second. Q – My lentils come out of the mold cracked, what am I doing wrong? A - I have only seen this once in person, a student let the top part of the mold sit on the bead for about 5 seconds. That will chill your bead so much, it’s just the same as dipping it into a glass of cold water. One second of pressing is all it takes, if that long… Q – My lentils look fine when they come out of the mold, but when I take them out of the kiln or the fiberblanket, they are cracked. A – Pressing the bead in a cold tool does put a fair amount of stress into your bead, you have to flame polish and/or flame anneal it before putting it away, especially if you only have a fiberblanket. I always flame polish my lentils, which evens out the stress in the bead, but if you don’t have a kiln, you have to flame anneal it for several minutes before putting it into the blanket. |
