Gathering can get kind of overwhelming, especially with the sieve that serves as my memory. O'Grady was scheduled to show a bracelet, according to the program, and he's certainly known for his borosilicate bracelets.
But he decided to do a boro chevron bead instead. Several points about his demo stood out: one, I believe he mentioned that the crayon colors, such as the yellow he used, have become significantly better in the bast couple of years. (But I didn't write it down, so I could be making that up.) Two, he showed how to pierce a solid glob of glass—boro glass mind you with a tungsten pick (unless my notes are totally screwed up and he made this in soda-lime, but I don't think so, not with a note for cobalt 6, which I presume was to read as black.) I watched Lauren Stump do this years ago in soft glass, and was very impressed, but Mr. O'Grady actually made it look not just possible but easy. Not that I was fooled. This demo went into the category of so beyond my skill sets I effectively forgot about it till I looked at my notes.
He layered his colors vertically and horizontally to prevent lumpiness, he said, and because flux burns off between layers. He marked the end the layered cylinder, then spot heated it to cut grooves in it with his ‘bracelet paddle tool’ (all the while remarking to the audience, ‘bring tools, kevin’ whilst sending someone off to fetch one from Arrow Springs) After shaping the cylinder into a 12 point star, he demoed piercing it with the tungsten, puntying up both ends, one with a tube into which he blew (via a hose) while pulling it out, to keep the hole size consistant. He uses a saw to cut the tubing, getting perhaps three(?) beads from each pull. (Typically, chevron bead making is furnace process, yielding dozens or hundreds of bead from each pull. However, furnace work is done almost exclusively with soft glass.)
He also discussed grinding the tubes into the chevron shape using a diamondback grinder and polishing with a vibratory tumbler. The boro and polishing gave the beads a matte, rather antique handmade look—subtle, rather than the high-gloss effect favored by some other modern chevron beadmakers.
Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.
