Attracked to the Flame - Part IV

In this picture, you can see some of my mandrels laying on my work surface. (My work surface is metal in case some hot glass spits off of a rod I'm trying to heat, or if the glass gets so hot that it literally drips off of the rod and onto the surface of my desk.)

The mandrels are the metal rods and are made out of stainless steel so they don't rust. They look lighter in color at the tip because I have just finished running each of them over my hubby's belt sander to get a nice roughed-up surface for the release agent to adhere to. The release agent is something you stick the rods into and allow to dry before using the mandrel to make a bead. This allows you to remove the bead from the mandrel after it has been annealed in the oven and cooled down. If you did not use release agent, the melted glass would stick right to the rod permanently. You can get release agent in dark gray or light blue. I prefer the light blue since you can never remove 100% of the release agent from the hole in the bead, and anything left over, if light blue, has a cleaner look than the dark gray, which tends to look dirty. If I have a really clear bead, I like to do the extra work to get all of the release agent out, which takes a lot of sanding with tools with diamond bits on them, and then finish the piece by coating the inside of the hole with a clear laquer.