Tips and Tricks

for Newbies and the Forgetful:

• Use a craft scissor holder to store tools on your table, or an old poker chip holder found from an attic sale –               they rotate!
• Boro requires different strength didymium lenses than soft glass.
• Never melt silver, frit, enamel or do any melting or fuming of metal on glass without wearing the proper                     ventilation mask and having sufficient air flow.
• Propane controls are always red; oxygen controls are silver, green or blue. (Remember also: righty tighty,                 lefty loosey.)
• To make an emergency stringer, keep your bead warm, heat a small gather, touch it to the tip of the mandrel          and pull.
• Never take your eyes from hot glass or let your mandrel stop turning while glass is still glowing – it’ll sag in a           nano-second.
• If you’re having trouble with clean edges on your beads, try holding the rod of glass perpendicular to the                      mandrel, touch with hot glass and turn the mandrel AWAY from you – it pulls the hot glass from the rod.
• Connectors for oxygen & propane tanks have opposing threads – that way there’s no chance to connect                        oxygen hoses to propane, or vice versa
• Never use oil products on hose connections. Rub a bar of soap in the threads for easy connect/disconnect.