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The new "Easy Presses"
Tutorial
Okay, I hope you don't mind me bragging. I was already pretty pleased with myself when I invented the "CBS - Corina Bead Press", about 7 years ago. Till then, there was only ONE lentil press available, a "masher-style tool which was made in Murano, by Carlo Dona - and for the ONE size lentil I bought I paid $ 120.
The CBS almost caused a revolution in beadmaking (I think I can safely say that) - and of course it didn't take much time till the idea was copied (with some variation, the original "base" system was replaced by pins), and then the very worst happened: my own manufacturer decided that they could make more money by just cutting me out altogether - and they went out on their own.
It took me a while to get emotionally over that shock of being "stabbed in the back", but I guess that's all part of life, and if we aren't strong, we'll allow others to get to us.
Anyway, a few years ago I had an amazing idea about how my initial "base-mechanism" could be improved and "easy-fied". I just pondered the idea, but it took my meeting Tony Garcia, who was introduced to me by my dear friends Grace and Franks Santos of "Graceful Customs", to actually manufacture a prototype and try it out "for real".
And I was amazed and delighted how my brainchild turned into a beautiful healthy baby. About 30 students in the past two month had a opportunity to test the presses, and the all loved the system, the general reaction was "Duh, this is SO easy, why hasn't anyone thought of this before?!"
What is new and "revolutionary"? Instead of having a bulky, rusting base that is expensive, heavy and takes time to switch between molds while making a bead, or instead of having pins that take time to be alined with the holes and ask for a much larger piece of brass than actually needed, the Easypress has a stainless steel "fence" on each mold, and all you need to do is push the top part of the mold into the corner of the fence - voila, top and bottom match, as easy as that!
As you can see in the picture, there are two markers to indicate which is the left side of the mold: the x in the corner, and the ROUNDED left edge. In all molds the sizes of the shapes increase from left to right.
If you looked at all the tools I have available, you can see that I mainly focused on lentils and squeezes. Nothing else. This is a result of my philosophy that tools should ENHANCE your beadmaking options and creativity by giving you a "canvas" to make your design on, and not push you into a mold (literally) where you have to figure out what to do with the shape.
With my initial toolmaker I always had the problem that he would send me prototypes of tools that he came up with from a machinist point of view - and the majority of the shapes were just ridiculous in MY eyes - and men don't like to be told "that is not a good idea".
After they went out on their own, I believe that the whole press-business went kind of out of control. Here were two competing manufacturers that tried to out-smart the competitor with yet another cool press before the other party comes up with this, and the economy was such that people went out and bought every press available - kind of like the silvered glass deal right now - "I don't really need every single one, but what the heck, I can afford it, and one never knows, the next shape might be the one that will make me famous...." (you know what I mean)
I have been to several beadmaking studios where people had to build special shelves to accomodate their 50+ presses - and the shelf was exactly where all those presses resided, since a lot of the presses were either too specific, or too difficult to use, and that was just no more fun.
Considering the over 100 shapes available nowadays, it's actually quite surprising that you hardly ever see any beads made with them on eBay. It seems that people got tired of having to figure out how much glass to use and how to preshape the bead, only to end up with something that looked like it was made in the Czech Republic.
Most people just stick to the various size of lentils, orrbs and squeezed beads. So, that's where I'll stick to, unless I come up with a shape that is hard to make by hand, and I ask my toolmaker Tony to try and make one - but I won't follow the whim of a toolmaker and have to hurt his feelings by saying "nope, sorry, not that one". (toolmakers are like kids in a sandbox, they play with the wetsand to make stuff, and then they call their mom to show off what they did, to get a pat on the head..)
So, does that mean that if you buy a set of lentils, you will have exactly what you already have, just with a different alignment system?
Absolutely NOT - all the lentils have been "re-designed", kind of "genetically engineered". The main focus was to come up with a curvature that eliminates the mandrel halfmoon indentations. The larger lentils are also slimmer, which will make them much more attractive to be used for bracelets.
The squeezes have been redesigned to make it easier to deal with overpressed glass, they don't hit the wall of the base like in the original design.
So, rest assured, you are NOT getting the same thing you already have. AND on top of that you will pay LESS than you paid for most of the molds you purchased in the past, and these are more fun to use.
So, that's all you need to know for now - tutorials and video will follow soon! Thanks for reading!
Tutorial
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