Czech Seed Beads

Seed bead making hasn't changed much in the last 500 years. Czech glass is made from a mixture of quartz sand and potash, heated with lime. Czech has large amounts of quartz, which is easily mined from nearby mountains and potash is the byproduct from the wood used to melt the glass. It takes 15,000-40,000 pounds of wood to create enough potash to make 50 pounds of glass. Luckily, the glass producing areas of Czech is heavily wooded, reducing the cost of production.

The glass mixture is then heated to about 1400° c. Once it is molten, color is added to the glass. Colors are made from minerals and other natural materials. Gold is used to make hot colors like red, orange and pink.

Once the glass is made, it is formed into very long glass rods. The process of making the rod has changes over the years due to new machines and technology. The glass rods used to be made by hand. Once the hollow ball of glass was made, it was attached to metal bars. Then two men would take hold of the bars and run in opposite directions until the glass rod was about three hundred feet long. This process made many different sized beads out of one rod. As the rod was pulled, it became smaller in the middle than at the end near the metal bar.

The process these days has changes a little. Lasers are also used to keep the consistency of size. A wheel pulls the glass out of the furnace. As it is being pulled, compressed air is blown into the glass to create a hole. As the wheel pulls the glass out of the furnace, lasers used to measure the diameter of the rod tell the wheel to speed up or slow down. If the glass is too thick, the wheel goes faster.

Once the rod is made, it is then cut into smaller lengths, called canes. The canes are then taken to be cut. A blade cuts the end of the cane into bead size pieces. Seed beads are cut into short pieces, whereas Bugle beads are longer pieces. The short pieces for the seed beads are then sent off for further processing, but the bugle beads are finished, which is the reason bugle beads have sharp ends. I believe this would be the 2nd to last step for two cut seed beads, since they do not appear to be tumbled and also have sharp ends, but I have not found any proof.

The seed bead pieces are then taken to a tumbler and mixed with a compound that fills the holes and helps the smoothing process. The tumbler heats the glass to about 800° c. As it tumbles, it creates the round shape and also develops the color of the glass. Until now, the glass rods and canes look nothing like the final color.

After they have been tumbled, the beads are then washed and cleaned. Even though I have no evidence to support it, I believe that the finishing touches are then added, like faceting, adding an AB finish or a matt finish.

Czech Pressed Beads:
The glass is made from the same recipe as seed beads. Once the glass is made and molten, it is then put into molds. Once the hot glass is molded then a metal rod or drill would put the hole in the bead. In Czech, their molds are highly guarded. Recently, they have begun selling them to China and other places, but the quality of the Czech beads can not be matched.

After the shapes are made, finishes are added.

Czech Fire Polish:
Fire Polish beads have been made for oven 200 years. They begin by making a pressed glass bead. The bead is then machine facetted and polished using a good deal of heat. This process makes a smooth, scratch resistant finish.

Japanese Seed Beads:
This is the particular method of the Miyuki Company, reprinted from Caravan Beads

Step One: Raw materials and recycled glass of the same color are mixed and melted in the furnaces. The Miyuki factory has both automatic and manual furnaces operating 24 hours per day. They are on the 2nd floor.

Step Two: When ready, molten glass from the furnaces falls through a hole. The shape of the hole determines the shape of the glass tubes. Compressed air hitting the center of the glass column turns it into a hollow tube of glass.

Step Three: After dropping to the first floor, the vertical tube of falling glass passes under a thick chunk of wood and turns at a right angle to become horizontal. Imagine a vertical length of rope passing under a pulley and then being pulled sideways. The scene in the glass factory is much more dramatic, however. For starters, the glass "rope" is still extremely hot so that it is slowly burning its way through the smoking piece of wood. In addition the tube of glass is actually being pulled over a series of metal troughs by a machine which not only pulls the glass but also cuts it into one meter lengths. The speed of the pulling determines the diameter of the glass tubes. A faster pull makes thinner tubes; a slower speed makes them thicker.

Step Four: The cooled tubes are sorted to make sure that they are the correct diameter for the size beads being produced. Any tubes which are not the correct size will be recycled and remelted to make new glass.

Step Five: The tubes are cut into beads. As the cutting room is not open to any outsiders, I can't offer further information. I did learn that one Delica cutting machine can only cut 4-5 kgs per day, which is one reason for their high cost. (And contrary to some rumors, Miyuki cannot run the Delica cutting machines faster to keep up with increased demand, with an accompanying decline in quality. Instead high demand just leads to longer waits for production). Delicas are not cut by lasers, by the way, another occasional rumor.

Step Six: Cut beads are mixed with carbon black and reheated to make them round. Delicas are only slightly heated; round beads are heated more.

Step Seven: The beads are washed. Miyuki has their own on-site water treatment equipment.

Step Eight: The beads are heated again to give them a surface polish. Basic opaque and transparent beads are now finished and ready to pack.

Step Nine: Fancier beads (AB colors, silver and color-lined, metallic, etc.) are based on the basic opaque and transparent colors. There are several different locations in the factory where dyes and other coatings are applied. Some beads require multiple treatments which directly influence their final cost. After dyeing or color-lining beads, Miyuki reheats them again to "set" the colors, a step skipped by some bead companies to reduce costs.

Bibliography
Beads of the World, Peter Francis Jr.
The Czech Bead Story, Peter Francis Jr.
The History of Beads from 30,000 B.C. to the Present, Lois Sherr Dubin
Guarded Treasures: An Inside Look at Contemporary Czech Seed Bead Production, Virginia Blakelock