I am proud of these. The outer edges are made with chinaberry wood, a friend gave me two small scraps. The middle of the left one is heart pine, the middle of the one on the right is cedar. I plan on experimenting with more layered wood designs
very nice. I ground some similar beads out of an old window sash I found, Just used one of them mini drum sanders you get with a dremel tool, but there a bit rough rounds the edges compared to yours. Can I ask what size you drilled the holes (I did mine 10mm, I think I could do with some 8 or 6 mm for my thiner dreads) and did you drill them first or last because TBH I've had trouble both ways, mostly from lazyness.
I generally use a hole say to cut a blank out of a board.. which leaves a really nice pilot hole for a larger bit. I've made most with 3/8" holes, some smaller, some even with 1/2" holes. I always drill the hole before shaping be beads.. the hole can be the hardest part, and if the wood is difficult to work, this is where you will generally split the bead. A drill press helps a lot. The very BEST way I've found to get the center holes correct is to use my hole saw about halfway deep on one side until the pilot bit comes through, flip it over, and score the other side through the same hole a few milimeters deep (so the hole saw comes out in the same direction/ angle). then I use a drill press with a larger bit and go very slowly with the larger bit, generally from both sides, as the wood can be prone to splitting if you go straight through.. Keep in mind, I'm working Heart Pine a lot, and this stuff is the devil to work. Before I figured this out, I even made a few holes with some little grinding heads on the dremel, but they weren't as pretty as my new holes :cheers2:
Thanks mate. I was splitting down a piece of timber with a chisel to get rough cubes about an inch a side and then just trying to hold them as square as i could in a drill press but the bit just wants to go with the grain and ends up where it wants to on the other side, i wouldn't have a problem if i took the time to clamp them but thats not my style. I'll probably go on the hunt for some more suitable timber as there's always plenty to be had in the local skips and have a go with the hole saw, that will save most of the time spent shaping them too.
For the plain heart pine beads like these I'm charging $7 for the first, and $5 for each additional, with free shipping. http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/showthread.php?t=314549 Now for these new multi-layered beads, I would probably have to charge a bit more. I will be gone for the weekend, and my awesome grandpa will probably give me MANY scraps of really neat kinds of wood from his shop. So I will probably be able to offer some really neat kinds of beads sometime soon. My personal favorite wood so far is the Heart Pine, which I actually have a good bit of now. I can make any shape and hole size you like.. PM me if you might be interested :cheers2:
My awesome grandpa just gave me a 5 foot board of black walnut from a tree that fell in his yard that he had chopped into lumber. Be prepared to see some reallly neat beads next week when I get back arty:
I'm posting this for knatty420. I dunno if you can post pics in private messages, so I'll just throw them up here, I hope that's ok. I figured a few others might enjoying seeing my latest project as well. Since you told me you might like to see the new type of wood, and some new designs, i did a bit of experimenting. 1 and 2 are the beads you see in the first post of this thread. The rest on the top row are heart pine (a really cool wood that I talked about a bit in another thread). The bottom row are all the new black walnut, with the exception of number 16 on the far right.. This is pine burl. I found a really deformed knot on a dead pine tree, and made it into the bead, so the grain is highly irregular. PM me at let me know if you likey
o like alotta those do u treat em with oils after sanding? linseed? or are they shalacked (i know thats spelled wrong)
