"Working with Glass Beads?" Topic

When doing conversions, I'm often looking for small cylindrical or spherical shapes. At the craft stores, "seedbeads" (small beads of glass, often from the Czech Republic) seem like they might be useful.

Anyone else tried using them?

Since they are glass, I'm hesitant to shape, cut or sand these. (They sometimes look plastic, but the container says "glass.")

The sides are smooth and I find superglue does not stick well; but they glue fine from the "ends" (where the hole through the bead is).

The larger the number, the smaller the bead. So a size 6 is much larger than a size 11.

The hole through the bead also varies with size. The hole through a size 6 seems to be 1/64th diameter; the hole through a size 11 is around 70 gauge.

In addition to the usual semi-spherical shapes, the craft store I visited also had "flutes" (cylindrical?) and "geometric" (the only example I saw were square beads – the sides looked true, but the tops and bottoms looked rounded).

In the same part of the store, you can also find "crimping tubes" – small metal tubes, which could be suitable for (short) gun barrels.

I'm trying some of the size 6 beads as "scanners" on a microscale vehicle…

The beads I want are solid, no holes
Bummer

Stainless steel shot is what you are looking for, perhaps.

Not steel shot, as that will rust.

I have no idea where to buy it or what it's used for; I found some for sale at a flea market ages ago…

Solid spheres – What about BBs?

You *can* sand those glass beads. Use black cloth wet/dry sand paper. Wet an area of the paper slightly, then abrade the bead in that location. A paste will build up. Clean and re-dampen as needed.

Stainless steel shot is used for sand blasting and polishing media.

I used a couple to give my 15mm figures' rifles a grenade launcher. It worked, and looks OK in that scale. Like you, I didn't know how to cut them down to a shorter length or even ream the hole out wider, since they were glass.

Grelber

gel superglue seems to hold better, or go to epoxy/JBWeld.

Poorly phrased , the ones I have, of the correct size, do not have holes. I've not found any small enough that have a hole and thus, like the esteemed editor, they do not stick

These size 11 are 2.1mm in diameter, according to a bead chart I found. Size 15 are 1.5mm, if you can find them.