Scopes Part II

Ever heard of a Beadscope ? Well, if you followed the last part, marblescopes, here I have made a beadscope. These are 2 mirror systems which means the third side of the triangle is just shiny black glass. Using the same math formula trying to get 5 point symmetry, I was able this time to get perfect symmetry but it was 4 point, not the sought after 5 point. Here is the finished beadscope.

I took a mandrel, threaded it, bent it and slipped it into a piece of copper tube I had. It fit perfectly, I tinned the tube and stuck it (soldered) on a corner of the scope. Now I can change the beads at the end and get different images inside the scope. Its adjustable as it slides to and away from the end viewing glass. There is no rubbing of the beads on the glass, to scratch it. I can change out the beads. This design allows much more light in so the image is much better.

Id have to say that this, Make one, model two is much better. If you hold it just right you can spin one bead one way and the next one down the other, and it creates some great images inside the scope. I think the bead holding end is a bit long. I figured that better too long, any extra space can be taken up with spacer beads than to have a perfect bead that wont fit because the rod is too short. Im hopeful that on make one, model three I manage to get 5 point symmetry.

The soldering looks a little bit better but still not what Id like it to be. I think my wimpy little solder iron is too small for this kind of work. Hop liked this one soo much he asked me to put it up for sale in his new bookstore, so I did.

Im excited as I still have enough mirror and glass to make a third one and Im sure it will only be better than these first two.

Got any comments, do you make scopes, suggestions welcomed, need help making your own scope, I will share what limited info I know. These were some fun projects.

Awful Sick

There is something particularly bad about feeling sick, like throw up, body ache, sore throat, coughing sick. In the rest of the world thats a bad enough thing and I gather that with wintertime, its going around and kind of normal, routine sick time. However, when you get sick the the desert, its 80 out, sunny, a nice warm breeze blowing, you feel even worse. I have never minded a bad sick when its cold out, grey, rainy, and you can cuddle up, turn up the heat, put on a fire, watch TV or videos.

However, when sick in the desert, the windows are open, you can hear kids out playing, the breeze blows by, the last thing you want to do when its 80 out is get under a blanket and pull the covers up over your head.

So here, it looks like this and you should be out golfing or romping around in the sun. Instead you are cradling your head above a garbage can wishing youd throw up so you can get it over with and feel better. Wishing it was all over.....

"Mommy, help me make the bad sick stop !"

Scopes part I

Here is a marblescope I made a few weeks ago and finally have gotten around to taking a few shots of it. This was the prototype, model one, make one. I was attempting to get to 5 point symmetry in the scope. I was not successful despite the best mathematical mind and work in town helping me out. Its not the math it was the assembly where I went wrong.

My pal, Hollister "Hop" David whos website is worthy of a visit, an extremely talented artist and mathematician managed to put together the math for me in a matter of minutes. I went home and assembled the scope. This marblescope uses some specialty parts to hold the marble end in place. I later figured out the specialty part is actually a split key ring that I could buy anywhere for about $.50. Oh well, live and learn. So, inside the stoffobeads studio, I assembled this bugger up and made the marblescope. I really like the idea that the viewing object is removable, changeable and I happen to have a surplus of marbles, not as many as I have of surplus beads, but more than enough.

Its pretty cool but since the marble covers the end of the scope, there are two issues I needed to work out. One, the visual image inside is too dark. Solution number one, use clear marbles or marbles with more transparent colors in them. Solution number two, I need a way to move the marble or viewing item away.

Issue number two, the marble is pressed onto the glass at the end of the scope, slowly scratching it up as you turn it to move the design. Again leading me to a design where the viewing item is moved further away. I wish I could take credit for the idea but I cant. Reviewing every book, well the one, I could find on making scopes at the local library. I was led to the design of what Im calling the Beadscope. More on that in a later post.

Issue number three, not really a tribute to the worlds best soldering or my skill at it. Solution, practice and more practice, after all this was make one, model one. Part two will show some of these things hopefully solved or at least improved.

We have a WINNER !!!

Congratulations to Jo Hoffacker who correctly solved the puzzle ! Stoffobeads contest board had no problems ruling this a clear win.

Here is her winning email;

"Ok, Josh sends you 2 marbles. You hide one and you keep one. But that doesn't really answer the question"Eternal, portals, planets, and orbs I once had two, I sill have one, tell me where I put the other ?"So the question is really where did you hide your marble. And that would be in the Big Bend National Park on the US/Mexican border in Texas."

This is in reference to glass artist Josh Simpsons Infinity project. An internet search (VP Gore claimed to have invented the internet) and Simpson (bart simpson from the TV cartoon show) combined with infinity project would lead you to josh simpsons infinity site where Im listed as getting a set of marbles under accepted proposals and describe where I hid one of two orbs. Way to go.....

Thats it for this contest ! Her winning deduction has netted her the contest bead !

A special thanks to Jo for solving the puzzle.

Dot precision and some observations

I have been working on my dots for a while. Not as long as some folks like Tom Holland, Brad Pearson and the likes of some real dot experts. This Stoffo bead to the right has some real fine tiny dots and lots of them packed into this bead less than an inch long. Not only dots but pulled dots and hair fine lines. Lots of time, a steady hand and eye-straining work here.

Here are my observations on dots. They are finicky and don't always want to go where I want them to go. Some tricks and tips I learned from Tom and Sage. Make em. Gently coax them into place. I will never forget watching Tom and Sage move glass around, I had never seen anyone do things like they did. Below right is an example of some well spaced, formed precision rosettes.

Perhaps some of this is basic stuff you already know or maybe don't even care about. However this is the essence of precision bead making. A dot can be pressed down flat with a marver or tool to help set it into place. I find that marvering dots works well on larger dots not as well with the tiny dots.

As the dot is freshly attached like this }0 with that representing the connection of the 0 as the dot and the } as the base bead, the connection between the two is very small. The dot 0 can be moved around and pushed in the correct direction to make it go where its supposed to for pattern uniformity or design "correctness'. Dots can easily be made larger by adding more glass, thats easy. Dots can be made smaller by pulling a thread of glass out of the dot. Thats an amazing process and hard to describe but once you see it, you are amazed and forever changed.

Close dot placement is one of the trickier deals going. If you get a close/tight rosette of dots like 4 or 5 or more, any one dot can blow the whole thing. If the dots touch, forget it. Once your dots touch, the glass will melt together and leave an ugly multi-dot blotch where they join. This guy on the left is about as close as you can come to really messing up some dots but just barely keeping it from turning into a mess. This is what Im talking about when two dots touch. A bit more heat on this and those two dots would have melted into one ugly mess.

Placing tiny dots with a hair fine stringer can be a nervewracking process. Some folks use a triangle hand position so one hand stabilizes the other. Some just wing it, I sometimes steady the bead on something like the torch and then steady my hand on something else to place precise dots. The smaller the dot, the easier it is to get it wrong. Picking dots off the bead before they go haywire is also an important trick to know.
This bead I made yesterday has a series of 3 rows and 5 rosettes per row and 3 dots per rosettes. These dots are placed with satisfactory precision for me. I manage to get the dot orientation set so that in each row the dots orient with one dot on the outside, two towards the center.


I like to twist the dots and often do. I find that 3 dots look better when twisted. At least, they are more visually appealing to me once twisted. In addition, heat control is critical. Melting dots down to a point where the glass is joined and there are no "undercuts" on the dot. Its also a fine line between leaving a dot raised and melting it down smooth. Not much more heat is required and the ability to control this is only learned by much practice and experience.

Well there it is a fairly brief overview of dots, my ideas about them, what to look for with them, some ideas about how to get them to go where you want......

Contest Update

Here is the latest;

Got an email from that the stoffobeads contest committee insists I will share out fairness and to provide an update.

One reader has moved the clues closer to solving the contest.

"I was looking at your auctions on Justbeads. Then I looked at your web page and found the contest. Has anyone solved it yet? If not, I assume you are talking about Josh Simpson's Infinity Project, and how you make one marble to send to him to hide, and he sends you one to hide."

No one has solved the puzzle/contest yet...... You could be the one !

Bead Totems

Not really an original idea but here are a few of the bead totems I have made. I have about a dozen or so of these guys. The base is made directly onto a mandrel with no release on it so the glass is stuck right to the metal rod. I then use a tap and thread the top so the beads are screwed on. Otherwise, if when they tip or are moved for cleaning, the beads could fall off. Sometimes I thread the rod first, before the glass base is formed, sometimes after, it doesn't matter much. I then use small nuts from the hardware store to top them off. I did manage once to cover the nut in a thin layer of glass which added to the visual appeal by not having an 'ugly' not on top. It was way more work than I wanted so now its back to nuts. You can see the one with glass over the nut on the left hand side. I have thought about selling these guys but never have. Its also not something I want to produce so I don't. Anyway, its neat enough that I have wanted to post a photo of some here for a while.

Random words

Reading a few other blogs, I was referred to this site where you can have a web-bot scan your blog and create a photo of the site based upon the words it pulls up. This random photo they will then make into a T-shirt for you for a small price. A neat idea but one that Im not ready to pay for. I dont think my fashion-sense is that poor that I need to wear my blog, re-assbmled into an artful representation around town. I dont mean it as any dis-respect to the creators of the site that does this as I certainly think it was neat enought to post here.

The Wooden Spoon

Another posting in the series of things to do with glass beads that you wouldn't normally associate with the use of glass beads.

My long time friend Mark Spier carves amazing wooden spoons out of exotic hardwoods. Using hard woods like Mesquite, Ironwood, and other unique and unusual woods, Mark carves these into beautiful spoons. I know each one of these spoons is a labor of love as Mark often sports more wounds to his hands from accidental slips than Dick Cheney's hunting partner. Just kidding Mark.

Enough background, here is the one photo of a spoon he has sent me so far.

Overload !

Like a pinball machine that got bumped a bit too hard, and TILTs. Sometimes I get inspiration overload. Its a very depressing feeling that comes from an excess of other peoples creativity.

Perhaps my glass is always half empty. I can understand and see the half full side of things but never-the-less I get a blah kind of depression from seeing too many books at Borders, reading a book like 1000 rings, or 500 beads.

What I do is get all worked up that there is soo much creativity and unique art out there, the variety and quality (some good, some not as good) is so expansive that its hard to see where you fit in as an artist or potential artist and even if you manage to fill a unique enough niche then how do people pick you out of the enormous selections of stuff out there.

Thats sort of similar to what was/is happening on Ebay. When I first listed on Ebay there were about 400 people listing glass beads. Now its probably at or about a thousand. So even if you have a good product, unique and desired art product (I guess it does not even need to be art but just any product) but are one of thousands, how do you get out there, selected, known.

I dont mean this to be a huge bummerfest that is in a dark and downward spiral. Need/want some cyber involvement.

#1 Question is; "Do you ever get that feeling ?"
#2 "How do you overcome it ?"

Fortunately this doesn't happen often.

Post here....

No Beads here !

So,

I have been hopeful that someone would solve my contest and Id be able to post more on that..... No such luck. Apparently the mental gymnastics are not as easy as I imagined. One more clue-infinity project, there I said it.

The inlaws are in town and I spent the day roofing the bead studio so when it rains the ceiling wont leak anymore. Not that it has rained in oh say about 125 days or so. Thats the beauty of a desert, plenty of time to fix the leaky roof. Spent the day posting bead auctions and roofing.

Last week I made this wicked kaleidoscope, more of a bead scope it has a device to attach beads to it as the viewing objects. I showed it to my friend at the grand opening of his gallery and he demanded to put it on display/up for sale right away! I suppose it could be worse.

My day job has been super demanding and the beads have taken second place. I miss the flame and think about lots of stuff I could be making. Its hard to balance the time, between the family, beads, work, beads, paying the bills, beads, making lunch, beads you get the idea.

Im back to work tomorrow and do have a short weekend coming up Tues/Weds and already know I have a Phoenix trip planned so thats a whole day without beadmaking. Perhaps, maybe I will get to make beads on one of those days. Aside from making beads, I need to take photos and post some more beads.

If you want to see some beads, check out whats up for auction right now....

Snake skin






coming in the next couple of days, Green dots


a warring states drum and a few others.....

To bid on these and a few other beads, visit my website at Stoffobeads and then click on the link to my auctions........

Hopefully in a few days I will be able to put up some new photos. Use the clue...

Solve the contest ! Mega Clues !

Ok,

Im Bending over Big time here with some mega clues.

Use a tool "invented" by this guy, Al Gore.

Searching out to infinity based around the last name of a popular cartoon character, who says. "Krustys my idol, Ive based my whole life on his teachings.".

If you still cant solve the puzzle, apparently Stoffobeads constest board is going to be seeking a new puzzle master !

Neat Stuff Part II

Scott Bouwens of Bearfoot Art, maker of the EMS was also showing off a new item or two. I dont have any photos of this but Scott has created a tubing spinner. Its like an oversize EMS that spins glass tube. Im sure that this will be a hit in the boroscilicate glass crowd. Scott hinted at the fact that there are lots more things in the works. In addition, he has a few other cool items and improvement.

Some magnetic handrests that are adjustable and easily moved yet when in place, lock down to a metal base. A jumbo rolling marver that is larger than the standard rolling marver, Im told it can take much more heat than the smaller one. I just roll mine over wet papertowels to cool it down. Scott told me that if I wanted to restore it to a shiny brass color, a touch of metal polish will bring it back to the shiny color. We have a link to the EMS here already but have one in this post to make it supereasy to visit Scotts tool store. Hes a great guy who makes a bunch of cool stuff.

I picked up a few samples of some Glass Alchemy boro glass new colors that will be coming out soon. Two blues and a white that I will try out in the next few days.

When visiting my neighbor who was set up at the True Blue Bead show, she gave me one of her tools. She is the inventor of the Magical Crimp tool. Now really, this thing is amazing. I have mentioned it before but she was so kind and despite not having enough of these to sell retail, they were only taking large orders. She gave me one to try out. It works great ! Jaws are pretty narrow to allow them into the tight spaces at the ends of bracelets and necklaces. The handles are comfortable, the tool appears to be well made structurally. This is going to be the only crimp tool folks will be using soon. It truly is a better mousetrap. I have a photo of some of the crimps I tried it out on. This tool takes a 2mm crimp tube and on .019 wire, turns it into a round crimp so it looks just like a metal bead. No more ugly crimps ! Yay !

I predict that this tool is going to be the revolutionary tool for bead crimps. They are predicting that they should be hitting stores around June. Get yours right away, you heard about it here first. This thing is great ! In fact, I was showing it around to some friends and everyone I showed it to wanted one. I could have taken orders for it, or sold it easily for double what it will retail for. Everyone wanted one ! For those who dont know from earlier posts, I live in a very small town 2-3000 people and my neighbor two houses down invented and patented this tool. How cool is that ! More about the tool can be seen at Magical Crimp Tool. Plans are in the works I understand to make a smaller size that will work with .014 size wire. It does also work on elastic cord, which is super cool !

Neat Stuff Part I

Im back from Tucson and it was a blast. I saw old friends and met some new ones.
One person I met is John Winter, of Winterglass. I had corresponded with him by email when I made a submission to his 2006 Collectible Bead Artist calendar. I highly recommend it as a bead calendar and it does include my bead as well as many other great beads. Buy this calendar ! Available from the link to Winterglass.

Mr. Winter is a nice guy and we talked for some time about beads and stuff. Id like to show off his new product which I believe he was introducing at this show. Its called the Bead Spring. It’s a unique product and very quickly and easily solves a problem of what to do with a bead for those who are not good or familiar with how to use lampwork beads. The clip inserts into the bead hole and spring pressure holds it tight. I bought one and I believe it will retail for under $10. For those of you who say, I can make that, sure but can you beat it for the price ? It looks simple but there is some work involved in bending the wire, getting the ends flat, and putting the right amount of spring in it.

Im showing the Bead Spring inside my other acquisition, a Japaneese bead. The Japaneese are amazing beadmakers, using a very soft glass that is made in an amazing color pallete. The detail in these beads is just amazing. I had to force myself not to spend too much $. There were these beads with goldfish in them and dragonflys with detail so intricate you can barely see it all with a magnifying glass ! This flower bead is just striking in its complexity of detail yet simplicity of design. John also has a few other super cool bead accessories. One I really like is a button converter. Takes a bead and makes it into a button. Its only $4, that’s amazingly reasonable price for such a cool device. Its Fantastic ! Also available from his website.

Not only does John make cool metal bead accessories, hes a great beadmaker and photographer. So if you have the time, visit his website, with the link above or off the link on the side.

Gone to Tucson !

Well, tonight Im off to Tucson. The city is packed right now with rockhounds, jewelry makers, bead fanatics, and tons of vendors selling everything from truckloads of rocks, to tiny fine gems. You cant get a hotel room for miles around and the prices are all jacked up so it costs a fortune if you can even find one.

I have the luxury of a friends futon, in his guest cottage. The price is certainly right. There is plenty or room for the Stoffobeads team to come home from a day of lustful bead gazing, tool envy, and to crash out.

So far the contest appears to have kind of stalled out..... Danno gets some serious credit for working the clue angle. I know he is a sleuth of the first degree so he may be the one to crack it. I guess I have stumped everyone so far. I do have a clue to give out but Im not sure enough time has gone by and enough time and effort has been expended on it to merit the clue yet, yet.....

I will say its not really a riddle, its a question that with some research can be easily answered.

Well, I should be back in a few days 3-4 and perhaps will have some purchases, trades, or other stuff for some show and tell.