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| Glass
Lampworking FAQ Q: How is a glass bead made? The glass, commonly starting as a pencil-thick rod, is melted in the flame from a tabletop torch. the molten glass is wound around a stainless steel rod coated with a ceramic bead release which will dissolve in water once the bead is cool. The beads are often annealed in a small kiln to relieve stress in the glass which can cause breaking. |
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Q: What kind of equipment do you need to get started? The least expensive
beginner setup is a torch called the "hot head". It runs on
MAPP gas (a brazing fuel) which you can buy in small cylinders from places
like home depot. To get started you can cool your beads slowly in vermiculite
or a fiber blanket instead of having an expensive kiln. A complete beginner
package including special filtered safety glass might run around $100. The issue here is really compatibility. You could make a bead out of any glass but to mix glasses they need to be compatible in their thermal coefficients of expansion so the final product won't break as it cools. There are special lines of art glass designed to have a large set of compatible colors for lampworking or fusing or glassblowing. Some of these are soft glasses, meaning they have a relatively low melting point. Borosilicate glass is "hard", having a much higher melting point which requires a larger torch than the hot head. It has a low coefficient of expansion (Pyrex is a brand of borosilicate glass). The resources page has links to various suppliers of glass. Their catalogs list the melting points and coefficients of expansion for the various glass lines. |
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