Big Rings

I pulled out my large mandrels the other day to make a coupla rings. I attended Amy Holms's class on making glass toggles in March when I was learning how to climb phone poles.

I had problems with making the toggle bars, but the rings are pretty cool. They would make for easier components for others to use either as part of the clasp or focals. I want to make more and may use them as part of a giveaway to see what others come up with in their own designs

Toggle Clasps & Big Hole Mandrels

These are the beads/clasps I made in Amy's Toggle Clasp class last Monday in Brea, California. We used 5/8ths mandrels to make the ring part of the clasp. I didn't melt the dots in all the way on the purple or green for a more funky finish.
For the toggle/bar part of the clasp, we either cut rods into small sections & melted them to small spacer beads or we heated them to bend into V's and attached those to small spacers. My favorite is the shape of the V that I made with the red glass.


Here is a pic of the big hole beads on the mandrel, although I used three separate mandrels to make them....one for each bead. These beads take up much more surface area on the mandrel and are often very difficult to remove after being annealed.

My secret for easily removing beads from mandrels is to cut up these Scotch-Brite pads into 2x4" rectangles to hold onto the beads and twist them back & forth while I hold the other end of a mandrel still with a pair of pliers. The beads twist off like a piece of cake (normally!).