How to Make Glass Pendants: Disc and Lens Pendants at the Torch

Short answer: Melt a gather on the end of a rod, shape it into a disc or lens, and give it a way to hang: a wrapped loop pulled from the pendant body, a pierced hole made with a hot tungsten pick, or a hidden bail attached after the glass is cold. The bail is where most pendants fail, so build it hot and as one piece where you can. Keep the piece light enough to wear, fire polish or cold work the surface, anneal it properly, and finish with simple stringing hardware. Everything here works in soft glass and borosilicate alike — just match the annealing schedule to the glass family.

What a glass pendant is (and why it’s a great early torch project)

Flameworking is the craft of forming objects from rods and tubes of glass softened in a flame — historically over oil and paraffin lamps with bellows, today over gas-fueled torches running around 4,000°F in demonstrations (Corning Museum of Glass). A pendant is one of the most approachable things you can make that way: a small flat or lens-shaped piece with a way to hang from a cord or chain.

Pendants are made in both major glass systems: soda-lime “soft” glass, the traditional Venetian formula and the most popular flameworking glass, and borosilicate, a harder glass needing more heat and typically an oxygen-propane torch (The Crucible). Fancy implosion pendants are taught as an intermediate borosilicate technique alongside complex marbles and sculpture — which tells you where to start: simple disc and lens pendants with a plain loop bail are the beginner entry point; implosions come later.

Making a disc or lens pendant from rod, step by step

The core moves are the same ones used for marbles — gathering, rounding, controlling heat — just finished flat instead of spherical:

1. Gather. Introduce the rod tip to the flame gradually and build a molten gather on the end, feeding rod in as it softens.
2. Round it up. Let surface tension and steady rotation pull the gather into an even ball, exactly as you would for a marble.
3. Flatten. Press the hot gather between a graphite paddle and a marver into a disc, or squash it more gently into a lens — a disc with soft, domed faces. Work in stages with reheats rather than forcing a cold mass.
4. Decorate if you like. Dots, stringer, or encased color happen on the punty; keep the base shape simple at first.
5. Add the bail (next section), then separate the piece cleanly from the rod and get it into the kiln.

Thickness matters twice over: thick pendants are heavy to wear, and they need longer annealing soaks (more on both below).

Bail styles: wrapped loop, pierced hole, and hidden bail

The bail suspends the pendant from a cord or chain, usually via a jump ring. You can build one hot out of the glass itself, or attach a metal one cold afterward.

Wrapped loop (pull-and-loop)

The classic hot bail, as taught in the Lampwork Etc. community: pull a gather of glass out from the pendant body, wrap it around a mandrel or graphite rod, and melt the tail back into the pendant so the loop reads as one continuous piece (Lampwork Etc.). Done well, the loop is the pendant — there’s no joint to fail.

Pierced hole

Instead of adding a loop, you put a hole through the glass itself. The community-taught sequence: pierce the hot lump first with tweezers, then follow with a red-hot tungsten pick, widening the hole in stages with reheats, using a gentle drilling motion and letting the heat do the work (Lampwork Etc.). Two tungsten cautions from the same archives: pushing hard or working at an angle snaps the brittle tip, and the pick should stay at only a dull glow — overheated tungsten throws off yellow tungsten-oxide fume that smokes across and discolors the pendant surface.

Hidden / glue-on bail (cold attachment)

Sometimes you want nothing visible on the front — a metal bail bonded to the back after the glass is annealed and cold. The Kaiser Glass method: grind and roughen both the glass and metal contact areas, apply a thin coat of E6000 worked into the grind marks with a toothpick (to avoid trapped air), press together, remove the squeeze-out, and cure undisturbed for 24 hours. With that prep, the tutorial reports no failures across several thousand bails (Kaiser Glass). The same tutorial’s alternative cold route: drill a hole for a pinch bail with a diamond ball bit in a rotary tool, keeping the glass wet the whole time you drill.

Why bails fail — and how to build ones that don’t

Each style has one dominant failure point:

• Wrapped loop: the tail junction. A tail not fully melted back into the body leaves a cold seam inside the loop — the classic failure point. Reheat the junction until it flows together and reads as one piece before you call it done.
• Pierced hole: thin walls and sharp inside edges. Widen in stages with reheats, not one aggressive push, and leave enough glass around the hole to carry the weight.
• Glued bail: surface prep. Kaiser Glass’s track record came from ground, roughened surfaces and a full undisturbed cure — glossy glass plus a quick dab of glue is how glue-on bails earn their bad reputation.

A hot-built, one-piece bail has no adhesive to age; a well-prepped cold attachment trades that for a cleaner look. And any bail fails if the surrounding glass is poorly annealed — see why did my glass crack for the stress side.

Sizing and weight: making pendants people actually wear

A pendant is jewelry, and glass is dense — a piece that looks modest on the bench can feel like a paperweight on a cord.

• Thickness drives weight faster than diameter. A lens profile keeps visual size while shedding grams compared with a thick slab.
• Thickness also drives kiln time. Northstar’s boro schedule is written per 0.25 inch of thickness, so a chunky pendant costs both comfort and annealing hours.
• Check the balance. An off-center bail makes the pendant hang tilted; test-hang on a cord before calling a design done.

Editor’s note: comfort figures floated in jewelry discussions — on the order of “under 5 g subtle, 5–15 g medium, over 15 g heavy for all-day wear” — are rough community rules of thumb, not attributed measurements. Treat them as a starting point and let wear-testing decide.

Finishing: fire polish vs cold work

Two routes to a finished surface, per the Glass With A Past knowledgebase (coldworking and fire polishing):

• Cold working: polishing through a succession of grits — diamond pads, a lap wheel, or silicon carbide by hand.
• Fire polishing: reheating the surface just until it flows shiny again, without changing the shape.

They interact: ground or sawn edges must be taken to at least 400 grit (600 is safer) before fire polishing, or the rough surface promotes devitrification. And for lens pendants meant to be looked through, a fire-polished surface is shiny but not optically flat — mechanical cold polishing gives truer optical quality.

Annealing pendants so they survive daily wear

A pendant lives a hard life — body heat, cold weather, knocks against tables — so skipping the kiln is not an option. Two distinctions matter:

Garaging is not annealing. Garaging holds finished pieces at or near annealing temperature during the session; the anneal proper is the controlled soak-and-ramp cycle afterward (Mike Aurelius, Chaotic Glass).

Match the schedule to the glass family. Northstar Glassworks specifies an annealing point of 1050°F and a strain point of 960°F for COE 33 borosilicate, with an anneal time of 1 hour per 0.25 inch of thickness and stepped soaks on the way down: 50% of the anneal time at AT−125°F, then 25% each at AT−200°F, AT−350°F, and AT−550°F (Northstar). COE 104 soda-lime soft glass anneals notably lower, at roughly 940–960°F per community temperature threads — running one family on the other’s schedule is a recipe for stress. Full schedules and kiln programming are covered in annealing schedules for glass.

Stringing hardware basics: cords, jump rings, and metal bails

Once the glass is done, the hardware is simple. A jump ring usually connects the bail to the cord or chain. On the cold-attachment route, common metal bail types are snap-on, pinch, and glue-on styles in stainless, sterling, and gold-filled. Pinch bails pair with a drilled hole; glue-on bails need the surface prep above. For pierced-hole pendants, a leather or waxed cotton cord can run straight through — just keep the hole’s edge smooth so it doesn’t saw at the cord.

Which torches suit pendant work

Pendant work is small-to-mid bench work in soft glass or boro — beginner-and-intermediate bench torch territory. In our catalog, the National 6B explicitly lists pendants among its use cases: a compact premix bench torch aimed at exactly this scale. Any of the forgiving starters in our best beginner glass torch roundup handles soft-glass pendants; heading toward boro implosions later, weight your choice toward the boro-capable picks there.

Related skills: marbles share the same shaping moves

If you can make a pendant, you’re most of the way to a marble, and vice versa — gathering from rod, heat control, rounding with rotation, and paddle/marver shaping are the same vocabulary. Our guide to how to make glass marbles is the natural companion read.

FAQ: common pendant questions from the torch bench

Soft glass or boro for a first pendant? Both work. Soft glass melts at lower temperatures on modest torches; boro is harder and typically wants an oxygen-propane flame. Start in whichever system your torch and kiln are set up for, and use that system’s annealing schedule.

My wrapped loop cracked at the base — why? Almost always the tail junction: the pulled tail wasn’t fully melted back in, leaving a hidden seam. Reheat until it flows into one piece.

Can I skip the kiln for something this small? No. Even small pendants carry stress from the flame and get knocked around daily. Anneal every piece — garaging during the session is not the anneal.

My tungsten pick smoked and stained the glass — what happened? The pick was too hot; overheated tungsten forms yellow tungsten-oxide fume that discolors the surface. Keep it at a dull glow and let heat, not force, open the hole.

Do glued bails really hold? With proper prep, yes — ground surfaces, a thin worked-in coat with no trapped air, and a full 24-hour undisturbed cure. Skip the prep and they let go.

Sources

• Corning Museum of Glass, “Flameworking” — https://allaboutglass.cmog.org/definition/flameworking
• The Crucible, “Lampworking/Flameworking guide” — https://www.thecrucible.org/guides/lampworking-flameworking/
• Northstar Glassworks, “Annealing” (COE 33 boro schedule) — https://northstarglass.com/annealing/
• Kaiser Glass, “Glue-on bail tutorial” — http://kaiserglass.com/tutorials/page25.html
• Lampwork Etc. archive, wrapped-loop bail thread — https://www.lampworketc.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-55233.html
• Lampwork Etc. archive, piercing holes with a tungsten pick — https://www.lampworketc.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-146456.html
• Glass With A Past knowledgebase, “Coldworking and fire polishing” — https://glasswithapast.com/knowledgebase/coldworking-and-fire-polishing/
• Mike Aurelius, Chaotic Glass, “Garaging and annealing” — https://mikeaurelius.wordpress.com/2008/01/30/garaging-and-annealing-two-different-aspects-of-the-same-beast/

Editor’s note: temperatures and schedules above are the cited manufacturer’s published figures for their glass; other brands and families differ. Always follow your glass manufacturer’s annealing chart and your torch manufacturer’s instructions over anything here.