Seed beads are staple components that are incorporated into a wide range of jewelry and craft designs. Seed beads are usually consistent in their sizes and colour. That makes them ideal for conventional bead weaving, looming and also multi stranded creation in the design industry. Seed beads are uniformly shaped, take a spherical shape and range in sizes. Larger seeds are used in fibre crafts for embellishment with soft flexible wire while smaller ones are used in bead knitting. Small holes that exist in the centre of most seed beads means that stringing them would require the use of long narrow needles called beading needle.
Seed bead production
Several principles come up to back seed bean production. The following are some core principles behind bead production.
- The mould process. This is a traditional means of seed bead production. It is no longer used in the modern seed beads production since its time consuming. In this technique, a chunk of glass is heated on an iron bar until it melts. A bar of iron is afterwards inserted into the gather and the two bars are quickly drawn apart so as to create a long glass rod. The rod is then cut into small shorter rods used in handling.
One of the rods is reheated and wounded around a hot metal wire so as to create a ring of glass which is worked and shaped into smooth and round shape. This is usually done for several times on the same wire and creates glass rings. By the time the wire cools, the rings slip off and then used as beads.
- Drawn method: In this method of seed bead production, identical beads are made at once. As the process is complex, it cannot be done alone. It involves mass production of beads that are perfected by artisan mechanization. A large hollow molten glass is created and drawn into a long thin tube with a length of 300 meters.
The hollow globe is then manipulated while the end of the globe is moved away drawing out a tube of glass. The globe is composed of coloured layers adorned with rods of coloured glass so as to form stripes. It is then marveled so as to create specific shapes that are twisted during the drawing out process to produce spirals. The tube is laid down to cool and then broken down into sections sorted according to their diameters and cut into bead lengths.
- Fuse bead method: This is the modern method of seed bead production and involves fusing powder beads of different colours and shapes to form glass seeds beads.
- Mould pressed method: This method involved heating glass rod over an oil flame until the flame melts. The rod is then pinched from the flame and pressed into two pieces mould. As the glass is compressed, the excess glass is forced out of the seam while a pin is pierced to the glass to form a hole in which beads drain out.
Conclusion
Seed bead production provides good results that help generate beads used in design work. It is hence necessary to embrace the use of seed beads in modern design.
