Inaccurate observations!

Ok, as you can see from the title of this post, I know what I'm going to say is most likely wildly inaccurate, but I've got to blog about SOMETHING, so here goes.
A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of meeting- again- with some of my local lampworking friends. They're all women- just a handful of us. It just so happened that the owner the glass shop's brother was there, wanting a few tips on how to make beads. He'd tried it a few times, but wasn't happy with the results.

Before he got to the torch, we women were having a discussion about dots and how the significant men in our lives all hated them and complained when there were 'bumps' on the beads. Well, the brother was ready to demur and claim that he was a male and didn't mind them. But then we explained what they were and, indeed, he doesn't like those bumps either. So I am concluding, from my random sample of about five women who have men in their lives and one actual man that all men hate dots that bump up on beads!!!!

OK, on to the actual training session, such as it was. I haven't taught, or even met a lot of men who make lampwork beads, so, again, my sample is small and likely inaccurate, but I the men I have had interactions with seem to like the technical aspects of lampworking. From Tom Holland, whose precision is legendary, to random men on the internet on lampwork forums, to this guy, who is a newbie, I think I've noticed a trend. It was kind of fun to bend my brain around the way he was thinking. I am a BIG paddle user- just don't have the patience to let gravity do its work. But when I tried to get him to touch the bead with a paddle, he observed that the paddle was flat and he wanted the bead to be round, so I went into the Smirchich gravity explanation- he got that right away and was very happy heating alternate sides of the bead and letting them pucker out of the flame.

Then he wanted to encase it. I always find it funny when someone making one of their first beads wants to encase, but I gave him a rudimentary lesson, and encase it he did. The bead actually turned out nice and round, without glass pulling out from the center to the surface. He only scratched the surface of lampwork bead making, but he was happy, and I got a little something to blog about!