EMS Q & A

How easy/quickly do the mandrels release when you're done with the bead and are ready to put it in the kiln?

Is there any particular technique for getting the glass on the mandrel in a balanced manner? Up to about 8 mm it will go on balanced, but past that it goes wonky and I just put the rest of the spacers on the best I can while still in the holder then take it out and balance by hand. Any suggestions for getting it on balanced? Even doing that, it is a tremendous help and my thumb joint hurts no more!

When you are making cores bigger the 8mm, do it in two or more quick stages. Build up the size that you have an easy time with and then let that core cool a little. It will harden up a little and when you add more glass it will hold its balance better. I build up my core a little at a time. I move back and forth, from the heat where I build my gather on a cane, to the bead where I "deposit" the glass. The technique provides a more drastic temperature differential between the bead and the glass to be added. This helps keep the bead in shape better because less distortion of the bead occurs when adding glass. I hope this makes things a little easier for you.

I am a beginning bead maker using a Hot Head torch at the present. I am very interested in your EMS, since I have a bit of arthritis and can see the repetitive movement causing problems. My question is, does the Hot Head heat the glass fast enough to gain the benefit from the electric mandrel?

Yes, although it may be more difficult to do larger work. If you are making small beads, it would be great. Working with the EMS-2 is not that different from making beads the way that you are used to. Pretty much everything remains the same except you have help spinning the mandrel.

Sometimes I'm making a bead and after I start I realized that the mandrel is slightly bent. Annoying, but I can still make a centered bead--I'm not sure what adjustments I make with my hands, but I make them and get a perfectly centered bead. What happens if you're using the mandrel spinner?

Each time I insert a mandrel into the spinner, I check to see if it is centered and spinning straight before I begin. The spinner can adjusted to "tune" the mandrel and make it turn straight. Occasionally it goes a little out of tune or I do something to put a bend in it as I am making a bead. In those cases where the mandrel has a little wobble, the mandrel spinner will spin the bead into balance but because there is a wobble to assimilate into the balance, the hole will be slightly off-center. It would look perfect as it rolled across a table, but if you then put it on a straight mandrel and spun it around. you would see some movement, though not enough to make a deal about in most cases. Working with a straight mandrel is preferred because it makes lampworking easier and the reactions of the glass more reliably predictable, especially with a tool like the Electric Mandrel Spinner (EMS).

How do you use it to make a twistie?

The Twisties are made by building up a gather on the end of a spinning mandrel. Build up the design as you might do on the end of a cane. When you are done with the design and are ready to pull the stringer, heat up the gather, stop it, and let it drop a little by holding the tool vertically. Attach a stringer-punty and start to pull. You pull off from the end of a mandrel (with/out release). As you are pulling the stringer, you let the tool spin the stringer for you as you control the rotation of the tool forming the right twist for your design. With an evenly heated gather it is easy to get an evenly sized stringer- not a tapering one.

 

It's been bothering me ever since--bothering in the sense that I keep trying to figure out how it could work. You know how when you're spinning the mandrel with your hand, and you continually make tiny automatic adjustments in the speed to finally end up with a round bead--that's what I mean.

The question you have about the quick micro adjustments you do to get your bead balanced can be answered in two ways. First of all, you have full control over the speed of the spinning action through direct contact with the axle itself. As if you were holding a pen, you make contact with the spinner with your thumb tip, first finger and middle finger-tips, then apply a squeezing or counter-pressure to slow or stop the shafts.

Second, the Mandrel Spinner spins at a steady rate(approx. 260rpms). The steady turning is key because it neutralizes gravity. I know its a bold statement to say that I will give you control over gravity with this tool, but it's true. As the bead spins, the gravitational force is distributed around the circumference of the bead evenly. Gravity doesn't get a chance to act on any portion of the bead any more than any other. In neutral gravity liquids form into complete spheres which is what the glass on a mandrel spinning in one of my tools tries to do. Though it must reach some form of bead shape because its not free-floating like some drop of liquid in the International Space Station. It's on a rod. So it tries to form a sphere around the mandrel.

The gravity neutral effect of the spinning and the even heating that goes with it combine to give you amazing control over the surface tension of the bead. When you are melting new dots into a bead, for example, you apply them, then introduce the bead back into the flame and spin it. With the Mandrel Spinner you just ease off the axle pressure after the last addition of glass and let it spin. Holding the Spinning bead in the heat evenly heats the outer portion of the bead and releases the surface tension evenly. The result is beadmaking that is faster and easier to control. Once a bead has been balanced initially, it pretty much stays balanced automatically throughout the beadmaking process. You need to do something intentionally to make the bead go out of balance. Examples would be, if you stopped the bead's rotation when it was really fluid, made it turn at an irregular rate, or added glass in a lob-sided or grossly uneven manner.

Now that I have explained it all, let me sum it up by saying that all those micro adjustments you see as necessary are in fact not necessary and are only needed to correct the unwanted effects of a bead that isn't heated evenly or spun at a steady rate. Don't feel bad about that though, the human hand simply cannot spin a rod with the same precision as a machine. It's a good thing the art isn't in the spinning!

I am really interested in both the marver and the mandrel spinner. Still not sure how the bead moves in/on the marver. Since you have two rollers where does the bead go? And what about sizes and shapes of beads.

I am just about to begin my first beadmaking class and I am very intrigued by your device and I wondered what you thought of a beginner using your device. Would there be any disadvantages to beginning with this device? Is there any reason why I couldn't use this as I learn my way to beadmaking? Of course my first class with be as usual but I wondered if this is something that I should try right from the beginning of my beadmaking adventure.

I think that learning both ways is the best. The EMS-2 is a new tool and there are no classes taught that use the spinner. So, if you take a class, your instructor will be demonstrating with just a mandrel. The nice thing is that the EMS-2 is essentially a rotating mandrel. Anything that can be done off hand can be done with the EMS-2. More things actually, better and faster. You might take it to your 2nd class and use it during your work time. I think that a beginner learning on the EMS-2 would be better than the usual way because it would reduce the learning curve. Well controlled spinning of the mandrel is the hardest part of the process to learn at first, and is the cause of a lot of frustration for many beginning bead makers. This tool makes that easy to learn from the get go and lets the lampworker hold the spinning mandrel steadily. Note that you are holding a liquid on the mandrel and when it is hot and fluid it reacts more to gravity and jerky movements. Smooth motion and purposeful handling lead to faster bead making and higher quality beads. That's why you will find that the best bead makers have mastered various methods of smooth spinning.

I received the bead spinner and am in the process of learning how to use it - but I have what most likely will turn out to be a very dumb question:) How do I get the larger mandrels to fit into the bead spinner? Is there something I remove? Help!!!
Thanks so much for your assistance.

There are a series of sleeves that make up the axle. The sleeve that you insert the smallest mandrel into needs to be pulled out. You can then insert a larger mandrel. Each sleeve fits into another sleeve and holds a specific mandrel size. If the fit is loose you will need to make it snug by squeezing the tip of the sleeve with a pair of pliers. Be gentle, a little squeeze goes a long way. You want to be able to stop the motor by grabbing the mandrel and stopping it. Any tighter and it just makes things harder. You have to do this every once in a while but it is quick and easy.

OK, after two times through PT for my left hand, I am thinking I need to do something about the "spinning" motion during lampwork! The Electric Mandrel Spinner looks good in the videos -- very intriguing -- but I am not sure how the spinning works. Do you just turn on the battery and then tighten your fingers to slow the spin, or is there more to it than that? And how do you get it to reverse?