Hollow Bead Learning Experiences

This is the lab notebook from my first serious attempts to make hollow beads. I made two kinds: truly hollow ones built on two end pieces with only mandrel (and later, only air) in between; and hollow beads with an axle. The earlier ones are all lemon shaped because for some reason the first demo I ever saw of this technique showed the end pieces tapered. Later I decided it looked better to make the ends flat.

These are slightly tricky to make, but there's something nifty about them. I think I'll make more. One difficult thing about them is that they aren't real flashy :-) the average bead wearer would not pick them out as Super Cool, even though they do take skill and time to make. I'm trying to work out how to make them more decorative.

[Photos marked with * are larger than 80K.]