Bead Furnace at Atlantian Royal Easement (Pennsic)

Tinker, Irene, and I had a lot of fun making period furnaces at Atlantia's Artisans Easement at Pennsic this year!! Thank you Atlantia!

Below are a few photos of the furnace built by Tinker that I used to made beads. 

Volcano style bead furnace. This was build around a basket with a small hole cut in the top, and another small hole cut in the side as a bellows port. The clay mixture used was Irene's recipe-- two parts ball clay, two parts sand, and one part peat moss. As you can see, there was some cracking, but we patched it up with clay as we went along.

The channel on the side is likely not necessary. We used it to add in some coal, but dropping it in from the top was easier in the end. We had also hoped that the channel would help create more of a draft, making it possible to use the furnace with no bellows, Tinker read about another furnace design where this worked. However, that furnace was MUCH bigger. Our small furnace did not work this way.

In the future, we could create a removable clay lid with a narrowed top to make adding coal in even easier. I have seen an image of a furnace like this online in the past.

We also did not create a base of clay. The basket was placed directly onto the paving stone, but as the clay dried, it pulled up from the stone somewhat, causing a bit of air to escape from the bottom. 

Making a bead.

Adding and marvering in dots.

Second layer of dots

Final layer of dots.

Completed evil eye bead

Cute picture of me using the furnace!

Demonstrating for an audience!

Having Fun Cooking Lunch!
You can also see Irene's furnace in the background.
Her's uses a beehive shape.  The other two use more of a volcano shape.

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A few pictures of Tinker making her portable furnace. This one was not used at Pennsic, but it was built to showcase the process. I made this type of furnace with Erica a few months ago using Tinker's instructions (see previous blog post). I can't find my photos of the making of the furnace, so I've included these here below for reference.

Creation of Portable Bead Furnace

In April Erica and I made a portable bead furnace using a handout from Keely Tinker of the Mid (this post has a few pictures of Tinker making the furnace at Pennsic). 

Marion and Thomas let us use their yard and workshop. Below are some pictures of us making the bead furnace and using it. Video of us using the furnace is also included below. 

Drilling several rows of holes in a large food can. Screws were inserted halfway into the holes and acted as rebar to hold clay that was applied to the inside and outside of the can.

To make the furnace we used the same basic clay mixture we used at Pennsic last year (see previous blog post) but with the addition of one part straw. We used the kiln over this weekend, and at two other SCA events, before it started to crack, and then, only slightly.

The finished kiln. A large hole was drilled and a small pipe fitting inserted for the bellows. We used an air mattress pump. The hole should be slightly higher, as we ended up getting a build up of ash inside it. We can fix that next time.

Cowboy brand hardwood charcoal was used as the fuel source. We had to add coal after making one or two beads, but overall, the furnace worked well.

Finished beads. We used 132 Coe glass. We did make one or two beads, not shown with 104 COE glass. It worked, but the 132 was much easier and faster to work with, as it was softer and melted at a lower temperature.

VIDEO

Making a Bead 

Making a Bead With Dots 

Pulling Stringer 

Making a bead with stringer 

Videos of Turkish Beadmakers

These two videos were posted to the blog of Lady Isibel inghean ui Bheollain (of the Middle Kingdom). I had not come across these videos before, so I was excited when I saw her post them. One of the authors I've read who talks about evidence fr bead making at the Scandinavian marketplace of Ribe (Torben Sode) also wrote articles talking about what can be learned for modern bead makers who practice more traditional bead making techniques. One of the countries he studied, was, I believe, Turkey. Links to the videos and some notes I took are below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao7h3Z2W7Yc
-mentions using Pine as a wood source. This reminds me to investigate the BTU's of various woods (which several people discussed with me at Artifacts of a Life). Where does pine fit in here.
-they use broken, recycled glass.
-the beadmakers are male in this video and the other. This  video showed teenage boys (reminding me that what we do for fun, others do to make a living), the other grown men. Were men more likely to be the bead makers in period? Something I read a while ago discussed how historically when crafts are commercialized, men do them, but when they based around or in the home, women do them.
-the video noted that this was taught and passed down through the generations

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emSU2sYDMNs
-the audio in this one is not in English, but it has better visuals of the bead making than the other. A good place to start watching is 3:00.
---he preheats 2 metal rods, one straight, one hooked at the end
---he winds the glass onto the one rod by dipping in the pot of melted glass (can't actually see inside the furnace)
---uses the hooked end of the other to pick up small bit of glass and press it into the base bead
---marvels with a thicker and slightly flat rod.
---then hits the mandrel a few times outside the furnace to loosen and remove the bead (no bead release is used!)
-Also, something strange. At 1:45- there are beads in side in the side of the kiln. Why? Broken? Annealing?


Additional Videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhqArDha1qE  -posted by Tinker to facebook on 5/18/2017

Period Bead Making at Pennsic

At Pennsic this year I helped Bruni make a clay bead furnace in the volcano style (See Dudly Giberson's "Volcano Dream" article)  during peace we. Together with Aibhilin we fired it and mad a few beads the Sunday of war week.

Constructing the Furnace
In this experiment we were building off of our previous experiment where we determined that a mixture of sand, refractory clay, and regular clay worked best. However, we also tried a few things differently this time:

1. We used grog instead of refractory clay. Reading volumes 4 & 5 of the actual Ribe excavation reports  (not the summary by Mogens Bencard published on the DARC company's website which we used for our last experiment) I did not see the word refractory clay used. Grog, however, was mentioned in the actual report from Ribe as being found in some of the bead workshop hearths (Sode 2004). Grog is basically ground up/crushed pieces of already fired clay  (Piepenbrg 432). Because these ground up pieces of grog have been pre-shrunk by firing, it helps prevent warping and cracking of the furnace just as sand does (Piepenburg 20).

2. We increased the amount of sand used. Bruni found a video about 18th century bread ovens where the builder used a high proportion of sand in their mixture. The author of the video noted that more sand than clay would help reduce the shrinkage and cracking in the oven (4:00).  

Note: this video also described using hay to add strength to the oven. This is something we plan to look into doing in a future experiment. Hay, being an organic material would likely not have been preserved at the Ribe workshop if it was used there.   

While it may seem strange to use a video of an 18th century bread oven as a source for a Viking bead furnace, the basic principles involved in building a furnace/oven seem to be similar across a wide time period. The author of this video noted that most ancient cultures have some variant of this type of oven, and that there are pictures of this type of oven from the Middle Ages. As I noted in the write up from our last experiment, the excavations at Ribe don't give us much detail about what made up the bead furnaces (just that clay and grog was used), so we need to experiment  to see what proportions work best in our mixture.  Modern archaeologists do something similar when they look to people today that make beads using a more traditional clay furnace (Sode 2003).

We built the furnace using 2 parts sand, 1 part grog, and 1 part stoneware clay. Due to time constraints, we were not able to take the time to build it quite as high as we would have liked, so future attempts will likely be a bit taller. We added in notches in the side for the mandrel to rest on as in Volcano Dream article. We let it rest for 3 days to dry before firing.

Firing the Furnace

Working in the furnace.

Once we managed to get the fire to catch (which took a bit), the furnace quickly got up to a temperature where we were able to make two beads (using the 120 coe glass).

We also took a video of us making a bead with our furnace!

By the second attempt at making a bead, the coals had gotten very low in the furnace, and we would have needed to add more and wait a bit for them to get up to temperature, to continue. If we had added more coals, we likely could have made more beads. Unfortunately, it was close to 11 by this time, and we had to stop so we could let the furnace cool down and then go to bed!  Pennsic, due to scheduling constraints, may not be the best place for our experiments.

Bead made in the furnace.

Condition of the Furnace after Firing Some thin cracks did develop in the furnace by the end of our working session with it. However, we were pleased overall with how the furnace stood up. None of the cracks that developed seemed to go all the way through to the inside of the furnace, or were large enough to cause us to loose heat while working.

Note Since sand and grog function similarly, maybe we just want to use grog in the future? Sand was found at Ribe, but it was described only as being layered between workshop levels (possibly spread during the annual cleaning of the site) not as being mixed in with the workshop hearths themselves (Sode 2004). We have also just found a few modern books and online forums on pottery which state that at high temperatures the sand in a clay mixture will start to crack due to the "quartz inversion of silica" (Piepenburg 20).

Crack in the furnace after firing.

This is likely the last experiment we will conduct this year. At Pennsic I was able to talk to Tinker from the mid (who was one of the people I first saw doing these experiments) and and get the names of some interesting books, and other resources (including notes on her own experiments). Much reading will happen, and then we will have new experiments hopefully in the Spring.

Citations:

--Bencard, Mogens. (n.d.) Viking Age Crafts in Ribe: A summary.   Translated by Michaela 

--Gibbion. Retrieved from: http://www.darkcompany.ca/articles/glasperlen.php
--Giberson, D. (1995). The Volcano Dream. The Glass Art Society Journal. pp. 77-84.
--Piepensburg, R. (1996). The Spirit of Clay. Pebble Press
--Sode, (2003). Viking Age Glass Beads from Ribe, Denmark, In Light of the Ethnographic Research, In. Ian C. Glover, et. al. Ornaments from the Past, Bead Studies After Beck. London: Bead Study Trust

--Sode, Torben (2004). “Glass Bead Making Technology.” In Mogens Bencard, Aino Kann Rasmussen and Helge Brinch Madsen. Ribe Excavations 1970-76. vol 5. Jutland Archaeological Society.  p. 82-102.  Note, I also looked at vol. 4 from the Ribe Excavations. This volume covered specifically the research done on the stratography of the site (the layers of deposit that make up the site). 

Bead Furnace Experiments: Clay Mixtures

In May, Bruni, assisted by Aibilin and I, built several small open clay bead furnaces. We were attempting to make something similar to the less period firebrick furnaces we have been working with, but this time using a more period appropriate building material for our furnace.

The excavations at Ribe found flat hearths made of clay. However, the primary source about Ribe we read (cited below) did not give us much detail about the type of clay used. However, the article we read did note that refractory clay was found mixed in with the clay at at least one of hearths at Ribe.

Because not much information was available from the Ribe excavation about what material the bead furnaces were made from, the purpose of this experiment was primarily to test a few different combinations of building materials.

Two of the small bead fireplaces we made. Labels noting what materials we made the fireplace are visible carved into the clay in the picture.

We made small open fireplaces out of two different types of clay, ball clay (recomended by the owner of the ceramics store for this project) and stoneware clay, a clay that Bruni was familiar with from her work with ceramics.  We also tried mixing the ball and stoneware clay each with the refractory clay that was mentioned in the article about Ribe. Refractory (or Fire) clay is a type of clay that is more heat resistant than other clays. It is what the firebrick we used in our earlier experiments was made from. Finally, we also added sand to the mixture. Where we mixed more than one type of material into the clay used a simple 1 to 1 ratio of materials.

Note: we may want to try earthenware clay in the future
http://pottery.about.com/od/understandclays/tp/claytypes.htm

The addition of sand was recommended by the owner of the clay shop where we bought our materials. We had also seen sand being added to clay in other period and post period furnace/oven constructions. 

The sand is useful and important for a particular reason. When we were reading more about ceramics we found the following quote about primitive ceramics:  "objects made of a coarse, open body with plenty of large particles in the clay will tolerate more variations of thickness and fire with less risk" than an object made from finer clay particles and a thinner more uniform walls (Philip Rawson, Ceramics, 25). Later on, Rawson goes on to discuss more "primitive ceramics" which are put in direct contact with open fire, and which tend to be coarse/open bodied with big particles as a result (47). As our bead furnace would not be able to be fired in a kiln, we needed to find a combinations of building materials that could stand being exposed to direct fire.  As Bruni, who has taken many ceramics classes at U Penn, noted, when the water in clay is heated quickly as the kiln is being used, it will turn into water vapor. That vapor expands, and if it is trapped in the clay, it and can cause the furnace to explode when it is used. If the furnace is dried fully before use , this will be less likely to happen. However,  as the clay furnace dries, it will also shrink as it looses water, which can cause the furnace to crack even before it is used. The sand helps prevent the furnace from shrinking as much as the clay looses water and dries. It also allows the water an easier path of escape as it heats if it is not fully dry before use.

We built the clay fireplaces one weekend, and let them dry until the next weekend we all had free to play with them (about a month later). The goal was to stress test them, to fire them quickly and see which one either did not break, or lasted the longest.  We could then use this mixture to build bigger volcano shaped bead furnaces, or beehive furnaces. We did not time precisely how long each fireplace lasted, but we were able to make general observations about how long each fireplace worked before it started cracking. The small fireplace made of just ball clay cracked before  reaching a temperature sufficient to melt the 120 COE glass and we couldn't even start to make beads with it. The one made of only stoneware clay lasted a bit longer after we started a fire in it. When refractory clay was added to the mix, the fireplaces seemed to resist better. They seemed more able to withstand the heat, and we could use them for a time, but there was still some major cracking. 

Example of one of our clay fireplaces that cracked.

Overall the fireplaces with the sand and refractory clay both mixed in with the ball or stoneware clay worked the best by far; there was only minimal cracking in those fireplaces and we were able to use them to make beads using the softer 120 COE glass. We had to stop our experiments before those fireplaces failed due to incoming rain."Clearly the sand was important to the mixture for the reasons stated above.

Using one of the fireplaces to make beads from a glass rod.

Using one of the fireplaces to make beads by winding the class from a punty.

Source: Bencard, Mogens. (n.d.) Viking Age Crafts in Ribe: A summary.   Translated by MichaelaGibbion. Retrieved from: http://www.darkcompany.ca/articles/glasperlen.php

Bead Kiln- playing with stringer (part 2)

In my last blog post I talked about how I tried to do stringer work with the firebrick kiln. I noted that the method I used was from a YouTube video created by a French reenactment group, but how a slightly different method was proposed by one of my scholarly articles that I wanted to try. Below is a review of the information from the scholarly article, and then my thoughts about my attempt to use this method.

From my last blog post: One of my sources, archeologists Tine Gam, has done some experimental archeology herself, and she proposes a slightly different method.... Gam thinks that the beads were made by drawing out a thread of glass from the pontil using tweasers, breaking off the tweaser marks (creating glass waste) and then melting the thread onto the bead. Moving the bead back and forth  would help create the zig-zag pattern. The image below is from the article by Gam.

 

I tried this method, and overall I have to say that it did not seem to work as well as the previous method tried. 

First, it was hard to pull a long even stringer from the blob of glass on the pontil. Perhaps the blob of glass on the pontil needs to be heated more before it is pulled, and either I removed the glass blob too soon, or the furnace is not getting things hot enough as it is curently designed? You can see the awkward looking stringer I pulled below.

It was relatively easy to snap off the end of the stringer as described in Gam's article to get a clean point after pulling it with the pliers. It helped to dip the pliers in water and shock the glass. The piece of glass I'm holding in the pliers below also looks very much like some of the glass waste found at Ribe and described by Gam in her article.

When I started trying to work with the small stringer, I noticed that as I was applying the design I would use up the  stringer I pulled and still not be finished creating my design. Perhaps in the past they pulled longer stringers, but, if so, how do you fit a long stringer  in the kiln easily if it is a closed kiln with a small opening---pull the stringer in the kiln itself? Also, because the furnace does not have one pin point source of heat, and you are sticking the entire stringer into a hot kiln, more than just the tip of the stringer ended up softening, making this method feel a bit more awkward to use.

Using the other method from the you tube video still seems to make more sense to me based on my very limited experience. In that method, the design was basically trailed out from a soft glob of glass, and how the artisan pulled the glass trail would influence the shape/size of the line decoration. More experiment with both methods is needed.

***

Finally, some thoughts on the kiln design for this workshop day. This time around I tried adding firebricks around the open fireplace to create more of a closed design. The goal was to create a hotter fire,  but I'm not sure it helped much, as I did not notice that it was much easier/faster to make a basic wound bead. Maybe I could not get the kiln closed enough, or maybe, as Alesone pointed out, it was too small (and held to few coals) to get truly hot. However, I did find that this time I had a bit more trouble keeping my base bead (and the stringer) at the temperature I wanted it. They would get either too hot, or not hot enough to work with. Both of these issues are ones beginner bedmakers have, so perhaps this is a case of me needing more practice using the period fire source. Also, perhaps trying to create a covered firebrick kiln altered things just enough to cause me trouble after I had practiced on the open firebrick kiln.

Its also very worth nothing that winding glass onto a bead requires that the glass and mandrel be held in a slightly different way than when doing modern lampworking or when over an open fire.  This was an adjustment I had to figure out as I was working, using the above mentioned YouTube video as a guide. The first time I tried to work as I normally did, it felt very awkward. You can see from the picture below the awkward angle created when I tried to apply glass to the mandrel in the usual way.

However, using glass on a pontil or a small piece of glass held in angled hemostats, I was able to get the correct angle for adding the glass to the mandrel in a closed kiln. The glass needs to come off the rod/pontil sideways and the mandrel is held parallel/not perpendicular to the tool holding the glass.

Note: Thanks to Decklan for his help during this workshop session! He helped me start the fire, build the kiln, and kept the bellows going.  Could not have done it without him:) Melchior also helped by taking a turn at the bellows, so my thanks to him as well!

Added 9/11: Below is a link to a video of me working with stringer as discussed above. Thanks to bruni for thinking to take video.

Bead Kiln Video

Bead Kiln @ Artisans' Village (playing with stringer part 1)

At Artisan's Village I had a chance to try decorating a bead with zig-zags. This is a perfectly period bead design, and a green and yellow version of this bead can be found on my most recent Anglo-Saxon Necklace project (look to the top right of the necklace). Just like the last time I worked with the kiln, I used 120 COE glass.

The decoration technique I was trying to reproduce was one I saw in this video from Artisans d'Historie (a reenactment group in France).

 I used a pontil to gather the yellow glass I wanted to decorate my transparent dark blue base bead with. This glass had been melted in a small iron crucible. In period they might have softened glass on iron pan placed by the site of the fire, or melted glass in ceramic crucibles placed in the kiln (as seemed to be the case in the video). Once I had my glass gathered onto my pontil, I then touched the yellow glass to the blue bead, pulled back slightly, drew the glass to the other side of the bead and slightly forward, and touched down again.I repeated this pattern around the circumference of the bead.

It worked reasonably well. The yellow glass stayed soft enough for me to do this in the open fireplace I'm not sure 104 coe glass would have worked as well, but I have not tried that yet.  The only issue was that I didn't melt the decoration in all way before cooling the bead. I don't think I realized how raised the decoration still was until the bead cooled down.

     

One of my sources, archeologists Tine Gam, has done some experimental archeology herself, and she proposes a slightly different method. I will have to try this method out the next time I make beads. Gam thinks that the beads were made by drawing out a thread of glass from the pontil using tweasers, breaking off the tweaser marks (creating glass waste) and then melting the thread onto the bead. Moving the bead back and forth  would help create the zig-zag pattern. The image below is from the article by Gam.

                                             

However, Gam notes that the color of the waste glass with tweezer marks found at Ribe does not perfectly match  the colors used to decorate beads at Ribe. Instead, much of the glass waste with tweaser marks matches the colors of the base beads. Perhaps this means that the method used by the Artisan's d'Historie reinactors could be correct? Or, maybe more than one method was used?  I actually think this may be likely, simply because I know that in crafts there is often more than one way to do something. For example, there are at least three different ways in modern lampworking to make twisted glass canes.

Finally, Gam also notes that a small metal tool could be used to improve the zig-zag shape. After the lines have been placed, the glass designs can be moved slightly while it is soft. This is something I already do when making beads on my torch!  Gam notes evidence of this from Ribe, including a narrower shape to the corners of the zig-zags on some beads, and small air bubbles in the beads (as seen under a microscope)  that follow the direction the glass would have been pulled by the metal tool. I always thought I was fussing a bit to much when I tried to correct the shape of my decoration in this way, so it is good to know that this was done in period!

Gam, Tine. (1990). Prehistoric Glass Technology: Experiments and Analysis. Journal of Danish Archeology, 9.p. 203-213.

Two beads make with different fire sources

I realized the other day that I had made two of  the exact same bead, one on my torch (left), and the other in the experimental firebrick fireplace (right) This amused me greatly so I had to share. You can see that the bead made in the fireplace is less perfectly formed. However, this is not because of the fire source, but rather because of my inexperience using it. The bead made in the fireplace looks more like a bead that a beginner might make. It is not perfectly round, the dots are less evenly spaced, and one of the dots looks more like an oval and less like a round dot. Over time, as I practice, I imagine I'll get better. However, using coal fueled fire place is reminding me a little bit of what it is like to be a new bead maker again when I didn't "know" my fire.

More Period Beadmaking Experiments

Two weekends ago I went to Ysmay & Mael Eoin's house to make beads in their back yard using the coal and firebrick fireplace I first experimented with in early may . I was going to try to do this myself, but luckily Astrid stopped by to watch and her help ended up being invaluable. Some notes from our experiments are below.

1. More than one person is needed. Two or preferably three people work best. While, since I have the air mattress blower, I don't need someone to constantly work the bellows for me there is still a lot going on when making beads (tools get lost and are needed, and sometimes you want to change up how much air is being blown into the kiln). An assistant is necessary.

2. Having three people available, one to help with situation awareness (and take pictures) is also important. As they do on occasion, a small piece of charcoal popped out of the fireplace. It landed about 5 feet away, beyond our field of vision, so we did not catch it as early as I would have liked, and some of the mowed  grass still on the lawn started burning. It was quickly put out, but it reinforced the need for more eyes and an increased attention to safety when doing these experiments.

3. Continuing on the issue of safety a few other thoughts include:
--making sure there is no dry/dead grass around the area we are working.
--wetting down the area around the furnace
--having a very large bucked of water available (in addition to the fire extinguisher).
--making sure the work area around the furnace is clean and not to cluttered with tools

4. 120 COE glass is amazing. We tested 104 COE glass and the fireplace  was hot enough to melt it, but the 120 COE Satake lead glass I purchased worked *SO* much better. A higher COE means the glass is softer and easier to manipulate. We had beautiful coils of glass form when we wound the glass onto our mandrels. At this point, I can very generally document leaded glass in period using articles from scholar Julian Henderson, who writes a lot about ancient glass. I'll have to look into this a bit more before writing up formal documentation to figure out how leaded glass is different from regular soda-lime glass, and exactly where and when this glass was found in period.

5. I made a melon bead (which I also did in 104 COE, but it was easier with the 120 COE glass), and new for this experiment, I tried and successfully made a dot bead! I suspect this would be more difficult in the open fireplace using 104 COE, but I'll have to try it some time to see. As I pulled away from the base bead when making my dot, the little tail of glass got cool quickly, so I had to try wrapping it around my glass rod, and keeping it close to the fire so the little tail of glass would flame cut itself. (I think i need to take video of this sometime!)

6. I also successfully melted some of the 120 COE glass in an iron crucible (mimicking the iron pan found at Ribe), picked the glass up with a spare mandrel (called a punty), and used that to make a wound bead. This is a method that archaeologists (see articles by Torben Sode) believe was used to make beads. Interestingly, the glass also picked up some iron from the surface of crucible (perhaps the crucible needs to be cleaned out better before use). This was interesting because it slightly changed the color of the glass, turning the yellow a bit green when compared with the original yello color of the glass. You can see this in the pictures of some of the beads we made at the end of this post. The left most yellow bead is the one that reacted with the iron in the crucible.

7. Regarding the Fireplace: Making it one firebrick high (and not two like last time) seemed to work well. It took less charcoal to fill (although we still went through almost one bag during the several hours we were working). I did not mortar the bricks together, which allowed us to remove a brick and sweep out the coals when they got too ashy, and then we could use a coal or two to quickly restart the fire. I think were were back up and running in 20 minutes or so. Next time I might mortar three sides together (leaving the one open for ash removal). It was steady enough un-mortared, especially since we double layered the fire bricks, but i'd feel a bit better with it more secure. The copper pipe should definitely be mortared in place, as the hole we drilled was a bit to large for it to fit securely and it kept moving.

8. There was some interesting things happening on the bottom of the fireplace near where the copper pipe was. More so than last time, perhaps because the fireplace was smaller? I'm not quite sure what is going on here, but this may be similar to some vitrification near the blow hole described in a formally published experimental archaeology article (by Sode or Gam, I forget who). However, this was not something seen at Ribe, so it may point to a different furnace design. I will want to read up on this a bit more, and try to figure out what exactly is going on here. They did have some burned and darkened clay found on the hearths at ribe, so maybe this is the same thing?? The picture below is of the bottom of the furnace during mid-day when we cleaned it out.

The end of the copper pipe also started melting by the end of the day! Again, I don't remember this happening last time.

All in all, I learned a LOT from this day of experimenting!

Firebrick Bead Furnace Draft Documentation

Draft documentation from experiments conducted with Bruni and Aibhilin (May 2 and 3) with a firebrick bead furnace.

Please note that this documentation is in progress and things may change as we continue to edit the document. Information may also be added after further experimentation.

Period Beadmaking Experiments

This weekend, Bruni, Aibhilin and I made beads using a more period appropriate fire source.  Documentation is forthcoming, and future projects are being planned based on what we learned! Stay Tuned.