Beard Beads

Me and the husband, Don, were watching “Law and Order” the other night. One of the characters on the show was this older gentleman who looked very well-kept in spite of or perhaps because of the fact that he had two very visible beads woven into his beard. Don decided he liked that look and with Fat Tuesday approaching (we were going to a party that night) he thought this would be a good time for me to make beads for his beard. Technical issues of note for this project include figuring out how to make whatever bead design Don wishes and also figuring out how to make the beads stay in the beard temporarily without the use of adhesives.

Of course Don’s beard has a back story. It may not be completely relevant to this blog but it is funny so I’ll tell you all about it. Don’s not a slave to his facial hair; when he grows a beard he just lets it grow and grow. No trimming, ever, except right around the ol’ pie hole so the beard won’t interfere with nourishment entering the body. Once a year on the first day of Spring he shaves the whole thing off and then on the second day of Spring it begins to grow anew. Just like flowers and baby birds.

Onto the project. Don decided that, since Fat Tuesday is also Super Tuesday, he should wear one bead that was black with blue edges and one bead that was white with pink edges (to represent the two Democratic candidates). The black bead should have the word “Judgment” written on it in white and the white bead should have the word “Experience” written on it in black (also to represent the two candidates. It’s funny what people who don’t do glass will ask you to make.

I wound the beads on 1/8″ mandrels (to allow a little more room for the beard while still keeping the bead small) and then I annealed them. When they were cool I mixed up a thin solution of black and white enamels and clove oil. Using a crow quill pen (a very fine ink pen–the kind people used back in the day before cartridge or ball point pens were invented) I wrote the words directly on the beads. Then I heated them up to annealing temperature in my annealer and held them briefly in the flame to cure the paint. (You can see the paint get a little shiny when it melts.) Then back into the annealer.

It surprised me that the white enamel worked but the black got all funny looking. Possibly this is because the black is a Reusch enamel (lower firing temp.) while the white is a higher firing Fusemaster enamel. There wasn’t really any time to do additional tests. I was pleased that it worked as well as it did—the direct painting process was pretty simple and the words are legible and permanent.

Next, we tried to install a test bead in Don’s beard. We wanted something removable and something that wasn’t a hair wrap because…wrapping beard hair? Come on. We ended up wrapping scotch tape around the end of the beard hair segment and then threading that through the bead. After threading the bead we removed the tape, which was fun. To make the bead stay in place we jammed a couple of toothpicks (with tapered ends) cut shorter than the length of the bead and stuck those up through the bottom of bead. Primitive, but it worked really well. No visible rubber bands mucking things up. The beads just kind of lurk there in his beard. It’s easy to remove them too.

I suspect that this technique would work with normal hair too–for folks who want beads in their hair but don’t have dreadlocks? Anyone out there like that? Maybe, maybe not. Now you know how to do it anyway.