Shaping The Beads
Marvers like these are used to provide a flat, edged, shaped, or textured surface to work the glass on to give it a desired shape. They can come in a variety of materials from modern aluminum, steel, and graphite marvers, to more traditional stone, brass, and iron marvers.
Serated marvers are a common way of creating melon, spiral, and segmented patterns on beads. This is a soap stone seated marver I carved using these wood carving tools.
I have used soap stone as a flat marver as well but often find the flexibility of a paddle, which is basically a marver on a handle, to be useful. Flat marvers can be used to make cones, barrels, and to give a bead facets.
Thomas Risom describes the use of a knife as a marver in his book The Bead Maker from Ribe. I have found that a knife is a great way to make segmented and melon beads and that the flat sides work well as a paddle. I keep my knife coated with bees wax, an idea I adopted from observing glassblowers waxing their jacks. A modern way of giving grooves is the use of a heat sink from modern electronics. I also have used a masher to make cubic beads. A masher can be made to work like pliers or tweezers. While I keep many tools near to hand, I do most of my work with just the knife and either a graphite or stone marver.
