The Process: cleaning beads

So first of all I want to say thank you to all the well wishes from everyone- it helped me bring me out of misery :)

So... after I am done making the beads, they are put in a kiln to anneal, and then when they're cool I have to clean them.




Lots of the beads I make are made on what is called a mandrel. When the metal and glass are hot they'll stick together so the end of the mandrel is covered in bead release (looks a lot like clay slip) before forming the bead.



When you pull the bead off the bead release likes to stick in the middle.

I like to soak the beads a bit to loosen the bead release.








And then I remove the bead release with a tool called a bead reamer or just a really small file from the hardware store.



Or if I have 18 million beads to do






Or I use my dremel tool if I have 18 million beads to do.







All clean :)