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The next type of tool that I'd like to show is a marver. This is a basic shaping tool.
Its a graphite pad that's connected to a paddle. And on this pad we will take the beads that
we're making and we roll it on to the marver to shape the bead in to a cylinder or to get
a flat edge. Marvers have different shapes. Some have a conical or cylindrical shapes
built in to them such as this one known as an osibin shaper named after Kim Osibin. And
this particular tool is available through Arrow Springs which is in Shingle Springs,
California. The next idea for shaping and making glass is a very simple little steak
knife. These are very inexpensive at a local thrift store. I also find quite valuable the
use of a long nose plier. Also you can get this at a flea market for a couple bucks.
One of my favorite tools is a two dollar stamp tong. I use this for shaping a bead, making
a disc shape or squishing out a little paddy. But these are good squisher tools. You can
get fancier squisher tools or mashers ranging from small scale which are converted. A lot
of these tools in glass bead making are converted from simple pliers and they sort of after
market add ons where a tool maker has welded on little flat paddies to a long nose type
plier. And this kind of tool is commonly available at any number of lamp work supply houses.
Mashers come in different shapes and sizes. This is sort of a duckbill masher. And again
it provides the same purpose. It squeezes your glass flat if you need to do that. There
are shaping mashers that have actual stamps in them creating different kinds of specific
patterns and this one, we're looking at a leaf masher. Hot molten lava glass is put
into the jaws of this leaf masher, we'll then squeeze and be imprinted with the leaf pattern.
Very common and important tool would be tongs and these come in a variety of shapes and
sizes besides the stamp tongs that I showed you a minute ago which was here. This is a
little bit longer simple tweezer made in Pakistan. They're fairly inexpensive all out of stainless
steal. And here's a finer gage tweezer as well. All of these available for a dollar
or two dollars at flea markets. Mashers can range in size from the very small to much
larger and this is a large scale masher, basically almost like a Barbeque tong but with these
flat steel paddles riveted or welded on to them and good for making paddies and for shaping
glass as well. A more sophisticated version of a large masher is a parallel press masher
where the jaw action keeps parallel and so it creates a level surface in your squeezed
glass as opposed to the bigger masher I showed you a minute ago, where when it closes the
angle of the closing is not exactly parallel so you sometimes have to change your orientation
on this first tool. But these parallel action mashers are superior.