To drill or pre-pierce?
 

What are the reasons one would drill a bead after baking instead of piercing
it while soft? How do you drill a squirming, rolling bead, (i.e. what
drill, how do you keep it still, etc?)

Many thanks from a real newbie!

Some beads, like lentils, deform easily if you try to pierce them before
baking. It can be done, but it's not easy.

There is a new bead roller out by polytools that allows you to pierce
the bead while it is still in the roller, eliminating problems with
fingerprints, etc. A nice innovation, imo.

Barb

I drill after baking if I'm worried about deforming the shape,
especially on smaller beads; and I use a hand-held pin vise. You can
get them with multiple sizes of drill bits. I'll make an indentation on
the bead before baking so I know where to start drilling.

It only takes a minute or two. The downside, for me anyway, is I've
also broken beads that way (happened more often with Sculpey than with
Premo).

Cheers,
Carla

wrote:
What are the reasons one would drill a bead after baking instead of piercing
it while soft? How do you drill a squirming, rolling bead, (i.e. what
drill, how do you keep it still, etc?)

Many thanks from a real newbie!

If you do drill, try a small drill press. Riverstone.com has little
rubber pads you can use to keep things still, maybe the hardware store
would have them too I don't know. Drill presses don't tend to have the
rolling problem as much. There's a plate on the bottom that has a hole
so you can poke the drill through but this also serves to stabilize
round parts as they'll tend to settle in the depression.

Ingrid