The MeRICKAL Story
 My name
is Ericka Mattsson...
I have been making glass beads since 1994 when I bought
a little hot head plumbers torch and got hooked. I eventually was able
to build a little studio and buy a minor burner. Like a lot of other lampworkers
I learned by trial and error. I couldn't find a teacher in this rural
area.
I
decided to make a career out of lampworking and began entering art shows
with the beads and jewelry I made. Now I have a nice business called Glass
Trends and my sister Christine and I get to travel around to different
cities and sell our work.
 Over the last nine years I have accumulated lots of small
glass ends. Little useless rods, too short to use and too short to weld
(especially now with my hotter mid-range burner). I couldn't stand to
throw the glass out, so it has been taking up more and more space.
I have been looking for a tool to hold the short bits
in the flame but I have been disappointed. I tried a metal tube, a pin
vise and even pliers, none of them provided the correct hand feel.
Then one day in the spring of 2003, it started to come together...
I use brass angle to hold my welded rods while they cool
to prevent thermal shock. I was welding leftover glass that day and I
was wishing I could just pick up the brass and hold a rod in the flame
with it. So I cut some short pieces and taped them to a pair of tweezers...
and it worked!
 Of
course the tape melted and burned almost immediately, but I had the idea.
The next problem was hand fatigue. I couldn't hold the tweezers closed
while making beads. It was too tiresome. As I was contemplating the problem
I found the solution on my workbench. I had a pair of cross lock tweezers
sitting there which I never really used much. Once I married the brass
angle with the cross-lock tweezers I knew I had the answer.
I had a welder create a prototype for me, Then refine
it. The finished product is called the MeRICKAL. Bold letters because
it is a bold new product.
I'm very proud of it so I put my name right in the middle.
And I have found it to be the miracle tool. It is now an easy thing to
pick up a piece of short glass with one hand and use the entire piece.
Thermal cracks are not a bother anymore because you don't
need to weld. No more waste of expensive glass. and no more storage problems.
I have made three sizes of MeRICKAL. The regular is perfect
for the standard size italian glass rods 6-7mm. XL has a bigger jaw to
handle the slightly larger size rod 8-9mm.
I have also made a micro for stringers. The tools are
all stainless steel construction. They are all approx 4 ¼ inches
long. The regular and XL are available in a 6 ½ inch length as
well.
|
