Fresh Bread

My family suffered through some pretty sorry efforts at bread baking when I was learning how to do it right.  Nowadays, I make bread that I'm really proud to claim.

Here's a half loaf from yesterday's batch:

Just a basic white potato bread.  But I don't think anyone can find a better bread for a sandwich or toast or just everyday bread uses than this.  And yes, I'm bragging it up, but it a skill that took me a long time to learn well.  

My family eats very little commercial bread because I enjoy baking.  At one time, every penny was counted in every expenditure and I worked to trim costs where I could.  Home baked bread was half the price of store bread.  To save a couple of dollars a week I started making it from scratch.  Nowadays I keep on making it from scratch because I like it so much better.  

Day 15

Two thirds of the way through!

This one is a cylinder with raked stripes.  These can be called chevrons, though when you say "chevron bead" everyone in the bead world thinks of a very particular sort of bead that is made quite differently.

These are especially interesting for a couple of reasons.  First, they are the first beads in this challenge to use a tool for surface manipulation.  Second, unlike modern beads, the tool marks are left as a textural element.  In fact, from a modern bead maker's perspective, the hardest part about these beads was not taking the minute more to melt the surface all nice and smooth.  That gouge where the stripes were raked just feels wrong somehow.

BUT!  This is not unusual in original beads.  Leaving the gouge was apparently quite acceptable back in the day.  I can speculate about this, but nobody knows for sure why it is so.  My thought is that the glass workers who made beads back then were working with a heat source that was slow enough and relatively cool (compared to modern torches which are very hot and have a fairly small hot spot, so can heat just a small part of the bead for precise work, if that's what you want), so working the bead back to a smooth surface may have taken more time than it was really worth.  And if customers would buy it just the same, why spend the extra time and effort to get it worked smooth?  When you are paid by the piece, you try to make each piece as efficiently as you can.

I used black instead of the prescribed blue for the base bead.  In this case, I did it on purpose, not because I was looking at the colors wrong.  I have a black and red theme going with a lot of these beads, so wanted to keep it that way.

I really like that this bead is in the Bead Boot Camp.  Many years ago, when I was working on Islamic Folded Beads (another post for another day), I figured out how to get the effect I wanted once I started thinking in terms of how much heat was available, rather than just what the surface manipulation should be.  A large part of the visual effect is the tool marks left in the bead.  With this raked cylinder, it is the same.  Without that gouge in the surface of the bead, it just wouldn't be as "right" or as Viking-ish.

Day 14

Here's the next place the lack of color mixed me up.

The intended design:

Blue bead, white swirls, yellow dots.  Only the yellow looks white in the greyscale printout I have in the shop.

So, this is what I made:

 And I really like them a lot better than I would with the yellow dots.  I'm going to leave them as-is because I don't really care for the added dots.

Not all of these beads turned out the way I intended.  When I screw up a bead, I try to salvage it.  My usual method is to rake the surface into a different pattern.  In the picture below, that's what I did with the bead on the left.  Next one in, I poked and twisted with a stringer to get a whirlpool effect.  I wouldn't try to pass these off as historical, but they are still very pretty beads.

And when I had a bead that just needed something more than a surface treatment, I decided to add a little buddy.  Here's one of my geckos.

Day 13

Another zigzag bead.  This time on a bicone.

I like these.  They aren't anything amazing, but I like the bicone shape and I like the stark contrast between black base bead and white stringer.

Day 12

When I decided to do the 21 Day Bead Boot Camp, I printed out the PDF document for easy reference out in the workshop.  

Only problem is, I only have a black and white printer.

Now, this isn't a big deal, normally.  But this time, it threw me off a bit.  Here's the bead I was supposed to make for Day 12:

White bead, red stripes, blue dots.  Not a bad color scheme.  I knew that I would be likely to use ivory glass because I really like the subtle difference in color.  

Normally, I either read the description on the page or I look at the color pictures on my computer screen before I start making the beads.  But today I was confident that I remembered the color scheme just fine.

Here's what I made:

Not a bad job.  Very pretty, really.  But not the intended color scheme.  And Day 14's beads have a similar issue.  I'll get to those shortly.

I actually like the look of the beads better with this color scheme, so I'm not going to redo them, but I do feel rather silly for making that mistake.

Day 11

Squiggles!

This is a variation on the zigzag, but without the abrupt change in direction.  The tricky part is getting the ends to join up neatly.

And, a cautionary note:  If you use the much more affordable TIG rod for your mandrels, one end will be stamped with an identifier code.  This end is not suitable for being the end where you make the bead.  But if you dip that end in the bead release, you can't tell that there's a flat spot on the mandrel.  You know, a flat spot that would prevent the bead from coming loose...

Be smarter than I was.  After about 20 years of making beads, this is the first time I've done this.

A Video I Really Like

Normally, I intend to show work from my own workshop, whether I make it or someone else does with my help.  However, I wanted to boost the signal for this video because I think it is really a cool video.

How did people make glass beads before we had tanks of propane and torches to burn it with?  This video shows a historical method!

Reenactor making glass beads

It is worth your five minutes if you have any interest in historical beads at all.  Now I really want a place to set up one of these little charcoal ovens.