| Original Message: Re: Perforations |
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If you have a very thin needle (or a piece of wire) that you can insert into the perforation channel, you can probably tell if there's a rough place where the drilling (from each end) meets in the middle. Most stone beads have been drilled from each end for thousands of years. The reason is that if a perforation is attempted from only one end, the bead has a tendency to break before the perforation is finished—once the drill gets close to the end. Nevertheless, I can show beads that were drilled from only one end—and these are broken on the opposite end. So not everyone took the from-each-end approach. (I show these carnelian beads in my article here on "Pyu" beads.) At Idar-Oberstein, long beads were routinely perforated from each end. The exceptions were short beads. For a short bead they did this: They glued the imperforate bead-blanks onto a hard wood board, using a very strong glue. Then they proceeded to drill these beads only from one end. Apparently the layer of glue combined with being against a hard surface, made most of their attempts successful a decent percentage of the time. This means they could get beads perforated faster, or with less work. Jamey All rights reserved by Bead Collector Network and its users |
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