Tool Review Perlenpresse b501g

Review of the Perlenpresse Tool for thin glass shapes pattern 1 (b501g)

This tool has a  custom alteration to have the wire come out of the top of the heart.  Hello for my first post I wanted to review one of my many, many tools.  This is a headpin tool designed to make glass shape on the end of a wire, I use 20g copper wire.  The trick with this tool is not to try to add all the glass on at once.

This is a custom version of Perlenpresse's tool b501g

This is a sample of headpins I made using this tool.

 For the flowers I make a small ball and center it in the middle of the flower shape

here is the ball it's about 7mm around

after the first press,  I then add small dots where the petals go

 sometime the small dots fuse together too much and seperate them with a scalpel

 You can see that sometimes the dots get a little crooked,
That can be corrected in the pressing phase.

Here is the headpin after pressing,  sometimes it gets a little stuck in the cavity and you need to wiggle it to get it out.  There is room to add a bit more glass on the top 2 petals in the photo.  Just a tiny 1mm dot should do it, then repress.

I added some dots to the center for decoration.   Give it some good insurance heat and pop it in the kiln.

















Here is just a visual guide to using the heart cavity

Please let me know in the comments if you have any questions!


In response to the comment, I use hemostats to hold the wire,  rather than rotating as you would with a pin vice or mandrel I just turn it back and forth heating the back side then the front.  The hemostats release easily.  I have a hard time removing the wire from the pin vice I have.