making round beads instead of bigger donuts

[psaccessories]

Help. I have mostly made nice donuts, but now that I have a kiln and a dual fuel torch I can make bigger beads. The problem is I keep ending up with a bigger donut shape not a round marble shape bead. Is there a trick to making that round marble shape bead?
Thanks,
Patti

[StOrM]

You need to make the base of the bead wider and use a mold. to shape the bead as you go along

[chrissij]

or make a skinny cylinder and build a left and right bead on the cylinder; melt 'em together. Larry's method. (? Trying to remember here ?)

or make a fatter cylinder and marver the edges.

or droop and swoop. Make a bead, let it melt until it looks like it's spilling, turn the mandrel to catch it. Slowly but surely it becomes round.

No molds needed.

[Elizabeth Beads]

Use a beadroller (such as the CGBeads round beadroller) for perfect rounds.

Personally I like the donut shape best but it's nice to have variety.

[LM]

Someone else on another post made a recommendation to Slow Down! Turn the madrel very slowly and the bead will eventually round out. I've found it works a little too well..Now I can't seem to make donuts when I want to. If I really have a wonky bead the droop and swoop method works great. Can get almost perfect rounds with this technique. Haven't tried a mold yet.

[Lisi]

I don't use a mold for spherical beads. Make two small spacers about the width apart from each other that you want this round bead to be in width. Fill in the glass in the center and attach the wound glass to both sides (the spacers). It will melt along the mandrel and fill in. Keep adding glass until you get enough to make your round bead. Heat carefully and it will spread a little more, but these holes will be flush, not dimpled in.

If I remember correctly, two little spacers about 1/4" inch apart make a 13-14mm round bead.

[tammydownunder]

I just get a glob of glass on the end of a glass rod. Usually, it folds over two or three times. Then I touch it to a heated mandrel and keep turning until I use all the melted glass. Perfect round bead every time and in no time flat.

[MelanieG]

Without doing anything special, when I switched to 1/16 mandrels, my donuts suddenly became rounds when I used the same amount of glass.

So I figure on 3/32 mandrels, all I need to do is use quite a bit more glass than usual, get it nice and hot and it will spread out into a nice, round bead for me.

[Mermaid Glass]

I make a regular donut bead, then roll it onto my torch-mounted marver very lightly, just slightly flattening down the sides. Then I reheat and - voila! - a round bead. Sometimes, if I want a bigger round, I add a little more glass but I don't usually have to marver it again.

[psaccessories]

Thanks everyone I can't wait to try all these.