Recently I’ve been working on a new chess set that requires a whole lot of spacer beads made on a 1/4″ steel rod. Not really being a bead maker, I never realized all the work that goes into getting those stupid things off the rods. I’ve done it in the past, usually with smaller diameter mandrels, but still, it’s not my thing.
When I started twisting these off the rod, I wound up with a nasty blister on my right hand thumb from where I was gripping the beads. ”There’s gotta be a better way!”
Well, there is, and it cost me about 2 minutes of my time.
I took a plain old pair of pliers, wrapped the jaws in electrical tape, and voila, non marring gripping power. Lock the rod in a bench vice (I use a piece of copper tubing to help crank it down tighter) and there you go.
I tried it, and of the 15 beads I made last night, I only lost three; 2 were crushed, one was got messed up a bit because of some crud on the steel rod. Not bad really, and my thumb’s fine!
There’s a little bit of black residue on the beads from the tape, but it wipes right off and should come clean when I clean the bead release out of them.