Graphite Shaping Tool - Saucer/Disk Bead

Well, well, well. I do seem to be on a roll! Success also with this shaping mold.

I think perhaps I have changed my approach to using these fundamentally - building up the glass slowly and gently and using the mold/shaper to finesse the shape - rather than hoping it will do all the shaping at once.

Also - I have adjusted my expectation that the bead will perfectly mirror the exact shape of the cavity and use it to shape the bead, not form it, if you see what I mean.


A selection of practice disks. Yeah - some of the holes aren't perfect - which is something I HATE about using molds - it seems that in order to preserve the shape of the hole, you need to be very conservative with the shaping at the edges. Or maybe I just need a narrower footprint and less pressure.
I also can't abide chill marks - so I tend to loose some shape definition that way too. I'm happier with this bead - which has good ends and no chill marks than ...

... I am with this one - which matches the cavity perfectly, but has a ridge one side at the hole.

A half dozen choices of various sizes. If you stare at this image long enough - it reverses in your brain to look like a relief image of 3 dark beads on a mandrel - then flips back to looking like cavities.
Anyway - really progress in getting my head around using these graphite shaping tools.