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HOT HEAD Bead Torch Head
Many lamp-workers use an oxygen-propane torch system costing several hundreds of dollars and requiring an oxygen tank or oxygen concentrator in your home. The HOT HEAD torch was developed specifically for beadmaking as an inexpensive, safe alternative for home use. It's perfect for learning the physics for melting and controling flowing glass.
The two key concerns for glassworkers are the need for plenty of heat, and a "clean, neutral" flame. This torch is designed to handle high-temperature brazing fuel, for quicker working, and to minimize "reduction" or graying-out of colors seen when using a typical hardware-storestyle torch. The HOT HEAD will also work with propane but brazing fuel gives better colors. Screws directly onto One pound fuel canisters!

This is the best non-oxygen torch we have used.
Price: $47.95 Sale Price: $44.95
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Minor Bench Burner by Nortel

Economic workhorse has long been the favorite of Surface mix (Oxygen/Propane)torches. Great size for making beads, marbles and small sculptural work. Seven fuel ports. Use with 1/4" BC Hose set (below), shown in photo, but not included.
Price: $188.00
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Mega- Minor Bench Burner by Nortel

Super-charge your beadmaking! Works like a Minor Burner, but with more heat. Perfect for making murrini, larger beads & boro work. Equivalent to a Mini-CC. Surface mix, Seven fuel ports. Built with brass fittings to attach your hoses to instead of hose barbs. Use a 24' hose set with fittings on both ends(sold separately), or purchase an Adaptor Set (at the end of this Tool section) to easily convert the factory hose fittings to hose barbs so you can use the 12' x 1/4" BC Hose set (also below). Hoses and adaptors not included. Free domestic shipping!
Price: $239.95
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Mille-Marver

This shaping and pre-heating tool easily attaches directly to your HOT HEAD or Minor Burner to give you a 2" x 2.25" graphite block on a brass base which can be used in many ways:

Pre-heat millefiori on the brass shelf to prevent cracking when applied to hot glass
Pre-heat glass rods to avoid thermal shock
Shape beads and sculptural pieces
Roll the mandrel on the shelf to get even trails
Use the right angle to get perfect cylinders and cubes
Price: $21.95
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Creation Station Deluxe Butterfly Model

Designed to give ultimate Wrist Rest & Elbow Support for Beadmakers. Two rest wrists are fully adjustable to customize support you wherever you need it! Wrist rests also can be folded down if the need arises.

Universal Torch Clamp will secure any oxygen/propane torch, or can be reversed to secure a Hot Head torch using either Mapp gas canisters OR bulk fuel hose. Extra wide "Deluxe" Elbow Rests measure 8" from the table edge and 30" in length, which extends the support area. Shown in this photo is a narrower Butterfly model, which is no longer available. (to compare, this model shows the elbow supports extending from the table edge 7" to a full extended length of 24")
Thin pads are supplied for comfort with every model.

The Torch Plate, offering a Stainless Steel heat-proof surface, can be secured to your worktable with screws (provided) or can be clamped to your work bench using regular C-Clamps. Some people obtain a plywood surface onto which they can screw down their Creation Station. The board can then be clamped to your table if you do not want to permanently attach the Creation Station to your table.

Complete instructions and adjusting hardware are included. Torch is not included; shown for scale only.

The Deluxe Butterfly Model has wide supports, our most popular design.

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Leather Elbow Pads

These deluxe leather pads really add comfort to your beadmaking experience. Make your elbows say, "Ahhh!" when you sink down in these! Move them wherever they are needed.

They make a wonderful upgrade with the Creation~Station!

Quality Product: $29.95/2 pads. Available in Classic Black only. Approx. 7.5" x 5", single stitched, supple leather, moderately filled.
Price: $29.95
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Heat-Resistant Board

This light-weight fiber-cement board will protect your worktable from molten glass, sharp objects and hot tools.

This matte surface, Heat-Resistant Board is included in our Deluxe Beadmaking Starter Kit.

Our Basic Beadmaking Starter Kit does not contain a work surface, so you may want to add this one or the metal surface (below) if you have a table you wish to protect, or would like to arrange your beadmaking tools and glass rods on a heat-resistant area.

Approx. 12" x 15" x 1/4".
Price: $7.95
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Heat proof Worksurface

Protect your work table; use this light-weight stainless steel surface with an insulating back. Can be coated with high-temperature black paint to eliminate glare. Approx. 14" x 17".
Price: $9.95
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Hot Rod Rest

Want a great way to organize all hot items on your worksurface? Get one (or more) of these metal supports and set your hot glass down with the hot end elevated off of the worksurface. 8" long, 1" tall, with 15 grooves 3/8" in diameter.
Price: $10.95 Sale Price: $8.95
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Steel Tweezers

Pick up those hot little bits such as millefiori and easily apply them to your bead with precision carbon-steel tweezers. Try the 8" tweezers with blunt tips and serrated inner edges to reliably grab your glass and really take the heat. These also have serrated outer surface for easy handling- Only $4.95. Our 7" tweezers have pointed, non-serrated tips for more delicate precision work- Only $5.95.
Price: $4.95
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Six Piece Tweezer Set

Six different tweezers for use in flameworking glass and other applications. Included are a very pointy 4 1/4" long tweezers for delicate work, a straight non-serrated 7", a bent-angled non-serrated 7", a blunt 6 1/2" with slide lock, a 6" serrated w/non-slip grip, and a self closing 6".

Price: $12.95
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Tungsten Tweezers, Imported

Now you can work your glass hotter withour fear of your tweezers sticking! 2.5 mm thick tungsten, precisely sharpened to a point are mounted in bent tweezers. The overall length is 7 1/4". Comfort rubber grips on the tweezer handle help resist slipping. Imported from Japan.
Price: $59.95
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Angled Tungsten Tweezers

Now you can work your glass hotter withour fear of your tweezers sticking! 1/8" thick tungsten, tapered to a point and meeting with a flat holding area are welded at an ergonomic angle to a stout, robust tweezer handle. The overall length is 7 3/4". Serrated grips on the tweezer handle help resist slipping. Made in the USA!

Currently on Sale! 25% off for a limited time.
Price: $45.95 Sale Price: $34.46
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Peters Tweezers

Dual purpose tool designed to symetrically locate eye locations for fish beads, but can also be used to make loops and holes for pendants, vessels and buttons.
These modified tweezers have their pointed ends bent to point straight at each other.
To symetrically locate the eyes for a fish bead:Heat the area where both eyes will be located on your bead and place the points of the tweezers around the head and gently squeeze them, leaving indentations. Place the eye dots in the small dents.
To make loops and holes:Place a tall bump of glass at the desired location. Heat just the tall bump until molten. Squeeze the points of the peters tweezers together at the center of the hot bump. As soon as the tips touch, rotate the tool so that the tips rotate in the center of the hole. This motion breaks the thin web that would form across the middle of the hole. Reheat the bump, being careful not to melt the hole closed. Place the tweezers in the hole again and stretch the hole to the desired shape & size. For larger loops, use more glass. For wider loops, start with a bump that is more oval shaped at its base.
Price: $7.95
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Bead Rake

Perfect for feathering, poking, and general manipulation of hot glass. Like most metals, stainless steel will stick to your hot glass if it is allowed to heat up, so it is best worked just outside of the flame and dipped in water between each use. Much more flame-durable than dental tools; this heavy duty pick can take the heat.
Has two sharp ends, one straight and one 90 degree bent tip.

Price: $5.95
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Tungsten Pick

Choose your size of tungsten pick, which comes with a pin vise handle. Tungsten withstands the heat better than a steel bead rake and resists sticking in hot glass.

You can actually create a hole in your glass to make a pendant instead of adding a loop. Warm the area where you want to plunge through and super-heat the tungsten with the flame. Keep the heat on the tungsten as it bores through the glass with slight pressure. If your glass distorts, it is too hot. Once you are through you can clean up the back and enlarge the hole also. Tungsten is a brittle material, so the pick may break if you drop it. Both ends are sharpened though, so you could reinsert a sharpened end into the handle if necessary. Both 1/16" and 3/32" diameter size are 3" in length.
Price: $9.95
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Replacement Tungsten Pick

Replaces the 1/16" or 3/32" tungsten pick for the above tool. Or purchase this to install in your own own pin vise for a wonderful tool to poke or rake glass. With two sharpened ends, measures approximately 3 1/4" in length.

Price: $3.95
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3D Flower Sets, Large

Excellent tool for creating concave petals, which help layered flowers within your bead to appear to be three dimentional. Each 3D Flower set has three sizes of steel balls, mounted on a steel posts. Three wooden handles come with each set. No manipulation is necessary, but for a tighter fit, you may want to slightly flatten the ends of the posts so they will seat more firmly into the wooden handles.

These tools are effective to open up Lily Flower murrini. You can achieve other effects with elements as simple as dots. Follow these tips, learned from Akihiro Ohkama:

Flame cut the murrini segments from the murrini rod, so that the shape of each murrini piece is similar to an upside-down Hersey Kiss; flat on the top and tapering down to a point. Prepare and preheat all the murrini segments in advance. (Have an extra one or two handy). Spot heat the bead & insert the murrini piece into the hot spot about 2/3 of the way, pointed side down. Add a large dot of clear to the flat top of the murrini, but not to the edges still raised from the bead surface. Re-heat the clear casing and tap it GENTLY down with an Aki Shaper or similar tool to flatten/open the murrini, rather than press it down into the bead. Then press the ball part of the 3D Flower shaper GENTLY in the center of the murrini to expand and open the flower design, creating a more three dimensional depth to the flower murrini. If the flower has pointed petals, like the lily, you can add small dots of clear at flower tips & draw the tips outward with a rake. Shape the clear outward, smoothing to the bead surface.

Small set (our most popular size)has 4,5 & 6 mm balls (currrently out of stock). Large set has 6, 7 & 8 mm balls. Imported.
Price: $24.95
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Dual Action Marver

Cast aluminum plate for smoothing and shaping beads. One surface is flat; opposite surface has ridges for introducing grooves into beads for added texture and sparkle. Approx. 2" x 4".

Price: $5.95
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Graphite Paddle

Lightweight and smooth, graphite makes a high quality surface with which to manipulate your glass. 2" x 3" x 3/8" rectangle with a wooden handle. Good for shaping and squashing hot glass.

Price: $17.95
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Stump Shapers

This tool features a straight and a tapered curve, sharp edge & corner and a flat surface. It has a heat resistant handle. The brass tool, 2" x 1", is perfect for "freezing" the flow of small details with controlled marvering.

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Aki Shaper
Tapered Graphite tool for precision shaping, used by Akihiro Ohkama. Wonderful for the light tapping needed to press in murrini to soft glass. Fitted with a wooden pin vise-type handle.

Now in stock!
Price: $49.95
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Utility Shaper

A utility blade in an x-acto knife handle. This tool is marvelous for all kinds of shaping, sculpting and defining or correcting surface decoration. 1000 uses!
Price: $4.95
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Spatula Set, 4 pc.

Quality Stainless Steel tools have seven different blades, prongs and "scoops" to sculpt hot glass, to precisely apply pixie dust, mica flakes and frits or to burnish foils. There are so MANY uses...you won't know what you did without them!
Price: $12.95
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Deluxe Bead Squasher

The ultimate bead press/squasher with built-in adjustable stop lets you set the thickness of your bead. Get it right every time! Comfortable handles, responsive action...this is a tool you'll enjoy using! Our customers greatly prefer this tool over the economy version below.
11 inch total length, squashing plates 2 inches.

Price: $39.95
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Tweezer Masher

Great tool for shaping smaller beads or for use as an aid in making sculptural beads. 8" tweezer with 3/4" mashing surface has a responsive play. This tweezer handle is more flexible than the Mini-mashers (below), but the mashing plates tend to be more parallel to one another.
Price: $12.95
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Mini Masher

Sturdy masher with 3/4" plates mounted on a jewelry plier. Not parallel, but better for some types of agressive scupting when a firmer pressure is needed. They feel especially comfortable in your hand.

Now on SALE!!!
Price: $18.95 Sale Price: $14.95
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Star Mashers

Many shaping uses! Best Lentil Shaper EVER, thanks to Gail Crosman Moore! "Nibble" re-warmed edges of any flattened bead from mandrel to mandrel. Aha moment!

To make star murrini: Form a 3/4" gather of glass approximately 2" long. Punty an end. Heat at pinch point and pinch along the cylinder side to form a star leg. Repeat as needed, fill valleys with contrasting color, then pull to desired diameter.

Plates are 1/2" x 1 1/2" securely welded at the proper angle onto sturdy 5 1/4" needle-nose pliers.
Price: $16.95
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Rod Lopper

Quality tool allows you to nip off tiny sections of millefiori rod, so you can easily have many matching slices. No experience needed, just pick it up and cut your rods into ready-to-use pieces!
Carbide cutting wheels can be loosened and rotated to provide a fresh, sharp surface if the cutting wheels dull.
Price: $29.95
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Rod Nipper

Used to cut glass rods or millefiori/murrini canes in thin slices, even thin (1/8") diameter stringer. These straight jawed nippers can be used with one hand, so they are more convenient in some situations.
Price: $19.95
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Japanese Murrini Nippers

These are such great cutters! If using them for murrini parts, they cut clean, like scissors. The blades don't quite meet, so they are not perfect for stringers. Sharp & light, suitable for murrini cane, standard or large glass rod or large component parts! Easy action too. The best we've ever tried.

In stock & ready to ship.
Price: $44.95
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Glass Shears
Used to trim or snip hot glass: Simply super-heat the area and remove it from the flame, then snip carefully and reheat. Trim to shape paddles for murrini cane making, snip a coil of hot glass around a bead to produce petals or enhance your fish fins!

Two styles to choose from:
Small 5" Fancy Gold for $8.50 (Blade is 2")(Shown in Silver),
Large 6 3/4" Fancy Gold for $9.95 (blade is 2 1/4"),
7" Basic Black is not currently available.

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Lentil Tongs

These lentil tongs are our favorite, especially for the price! They make a great shaped bead. It requires a little practice to learn just how much glass to start with; a football shape of molten glass works best. The handles may bend a little but that does not affect performance. The two sides meet well and there is a groove to allow for your mandrel. As with any metal tool, keep out of direct flame.
The 3/8" size is great for earrings. 5/8" and 7/8" are the most popular.

shown are 5/8", 7/8" & 1 1/4".

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Spiral Tongs, Flat & Lentil

These specialty tongs are way cool!
The spiral lentil operates just like our lentil tongs, above, but leaves a spiral design impressed on both sides of the lentil-shaped bead surface.
Flat spiral tongs do not conform the bead to a lentil shape, but still leave both sides of the flattened bead with the spiral impression. The handles may bend a little but that does not affect performance. The two sides meet well and there is a groove to allow for your mandrel. As with any metal tool, keep out of direct flame.

Sorry, the petal tongs are no longer an in-stock item.

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