Studio Tip #3 - Piercing Consistent Bead Holes

Exploring technique, design, form and connections is stimulating. Finishing is frequently tedious. I compare it to making a dress. You can have the most beautiful fabric and intriguing pattern, but if the seams are crooked, the edges unravelling, the zipper lopsided and the hem wonky, no one will ever really notice the beauty of the material and the design of the gown. Finishing is the key to professional work, and anything we can do to make finishing easier is worth exploring. A few things that work for me in piercing holes consistently (whether centered or not) are as follows:

Some form of graph paper (in this case, a pad of old ledger sheets) can help line up the holes on irregularly shaped beads. Centre the bead on a line, choose the line for the hole(s), slightly push a thin bead-baking pin into the bead on one side just far enough to make a guide hole, then do the same on the other side. Pick the bead up and carefully drill the pin through the bead, stopping just as it appears on the other side. If you've missed the guide hole on the other side, just remove the pin and push it in through that guide hole on the other side, and gently close the errant hole.

When working on a lot of beads with double holes, such as square bracelet beads (this also works on curved beads) I took two T-pins (macrame pins for those of you who are aging hippies, like me), embedded them in scrap clay which I wrapped in scrap canes, set at the right distance from each other, and cured.

 This tool will quickly make consistent holes in a lot of beads, especially beads with channels inside that are wrapped with a strip of clay that would hide the channel. If the channel is set at a width that corresponds with the distance between the two T-pins, it's pretty quick work.

I cut a piece of eraser to size and push the tool into it so I can use it to protect the tool (and my hands) when in the drawer.