I recently returned from another trip to China. I was traveling with my friend Bud Ehrle on this trip. We visited Hong Kong and then moved on to China to hunt for new products, rough stone (uncut), and specimens. While in China we visited 3 factories that I have worked closely with for many years. I decided it would be fun to take pictures and video of the complete stone bead making process. I hope you enjoy ready my blog and invite you to email me at bill@cherrytreebeads.com if you have any further questions about how these beads are made. I will do my best to answer your questions.
As many of you already know, I have a love of jaspers and agates. I am constantly on the hunt for new stones or ones that have not been cut into beads yet. The stone or “rough” as it is called is mined throughout the world. A list of countries where we frequently obtain rough includes: The United States, Mexico, Canada, Africa, Madagascar, Brazil, Australia, and China. After the rough is mined, it is sorted, graded, and then loaded into containers to be shipped to China for cutting into beads.
Below are 2 pictures of piles of rough that had just arrived from North America. We have wild horse picture jasper from Oregon, and birdseye rhyolite, porcelain jasper, and white crazy lace agate from Mexico.
These 2 pictures are a wide view of the rough yard at one of the factories along with a new stone that we found this year in China. It is chrysocolla with copper flakes inbedded in the stone. I hope it cuts out well because it was very striking in rough form.
After the rough has been selected and we have decided on the shapes and quantities of strands, the factory will start production on the beads. Many factories are housed in older building with small rooms but this one is located in a large open building. You can see the lines for water and lubricant and also the ventilation ducts. Each machine is vented into a large vacuum system which keeps the air clean of stone dust. This is necessary due to the nature of the stones, many of which would be hazardous to grind without these precautions.
This photo shows a line of automated slabbing machines. The rough is clamped onto a moving bed. This bed is fed at a controlled rate depending on the stone hardness. The slabs will be cut to the desired thickness depending on the shape and size of the bead desired.
This picture shows a basket of imperial jasper from Mexico. This stone has many fractures so is cast into a square of concrete before cutting. Each stone requires different treatments or techniques to maximize the yield. In general you can expect about 15% of the weight of the rough to remain in the form of beads when processed meaning that a full 85% is lost to cutting, grinding, polishing and breakage.
Below is another type of slab saw which has a gang of diamond blades and can cut several slabs from the rough stone at one time. This can only be used for certain stones that have a suitable shape. Press the play button the image on the right to see it in action.
This is the resulting stone. The slabs will be separated by hand using a single diamond wheel. Any time this process can be used, it saves time and thus lowers the final cost of producing the beads.
This is a machine used to cut long square rods into cubes that will later be made into round beads. You can see that one worker can quickly cut thousands of cubes because there are many blades cutting the rods at one time. The blades are spaced for the size of round bead desired. This used to be done on a single saw blade with the worker pushing the rod into the saw over and over. One worker can now do the same work as it used to take 10. This has become necessary because the cost of labor has increased so much.
Here is a pile of the resulting cubes. The next step is to knock the corners off the cubes.
This is what the beads look like after the second rounding stage along with the cubes before they started. Round beads require many steps to get a high quality bead with consistend size and uniformity.
In this series of pictures, workers are spreading round beads onto a disc with grooves. Another heavy plate will be placed on top of the beads and it will be rotated very quickly. As the beads roll around the groove in the disc, the beads become uniform in shape.
In these 2 shots the worker is taking a large square rod shaped stone and cutting small rectangle shaped stones that will be cut into rectangle shaped beads in the next step. This stone is birdseye rhyolite from Mexico. This is one of the newest stones from North America.
This is a basket of rectangles from the steps above. This next step cuts the profile on the edge of the bead. You will notice in the video that the grinding wheel has the opposite profile at that of the resulting bead. Also notice that the shape of the quide on the left end of the shaft is the shape of the desired stone. In this case, the shape is a rounded corner rectangle but by changing the guide to an oval, the resulting beads would be oval in shape. As in many other operations in the factory, this step has been automated. One worker can now produce the same output as 10 would have been able to do in the recent past.
This is a basket of the resulting rectangle lapis beads that were being cut in the previous step. These beads will need to be hand ground to even out the puff on each side of the bead.
These pictures are from the polishing room. Most stones are polished in vibrating tumblers. The stones go though 4-5 stages of polishing with increasingly finer polishing media. In the videos below you can see the beads cycling through the tumbler.
The next stage in making a bead is to drill a hole. These are a few pictures of the beads being inspected after being polished. Beads are drilled using ultrasonic drills. They do not rotate like a rotary drill but instead use high frequency sound to vibrate the drill.
Beads such as the round beads below are drilled in machines with many drill bits being used at one time. The picture below is a drill plate with the bits showing. The beads (round in this case) were pressed into a rubber mold and then the mold was placed between the metal guide plates. The drilling only takes about 30 minutes for a small round bead and a large amount can be drilled at one time.
It is a very different process for large shaped beads. Below is a video of a worker drilling large oval beads. You can see that she is experienced enough to drill a bead in each hand at the same time. She will drill the bead to the middle, then turn it over to drill the other side until they meet in the middle. This is why you can often feel a rough spot in the middle of the bead when you are stringing them.
One of the final stages in making beads is to string them. Here two workers are stringing 16″ strands of beads. You can see the bundles of pre-cut strings hanging from the rack. As they string, they will measure the resulting strand to make sure it is a consistent length.
The final stage is to tumble the bead strands using bamboo as a cleaner. This removes any remaining polish or dust from the beads. They come out of the polish very clean and ready to be bagged for shipping.
To wrap up, I wanted to show you a picture of a very interesting process. That of making an inlay bead. The picture on the left shows where they have glued up several layers of natural or synthetic stones to create a pattern. These may be cut and re-glued several times to generate the desired pattern in the cane. These canes are then sliced and shaped to generate many different styles.
Here I am inspecting a batch of high grade pendants and cabochons.
One of the greatest pleasures of a trip to Hong Kong or China is the opportunity to eat local foods with my good friends. I am always excited about trying new things even though I may not want to try them a second time (like the durian fruit I had on this trip). Here is a plate of tweetie birds that were served. I was told that I had to eat 2 and after a little hesitating discovered that they were very tasty!
After a hard day looking for new stones and shopping. There is nothing more relaxing than a good foot massage (no, not a pedicure). Here I am introducing Bud to the experience. He was a little hesitant to go at first but I think he enjoyed it.
I hope you have enjoyed my account of how beads are made. I have just covered a very small amount of the different processes involved but I hope you have a better understanding of how much work goes into the process and can better understand why good quality beads cost a little more.
I hope we hear from you soon and I also hope we see you at a show soon!
Bill
I wanted to give everyone an update on some of the things going on here at Cherry Tree Beads and with me specifically.