Make Cold Porcelain Clay Beads & Wooden Toy Abacus (Soroban)

I needed to make specific coloured beads for my wooden soroban / suan-pan / abacus.
This wooden abacus would make a great gift any child would enjoy playing with!
Learning abacus is a fun way to introduce Bill Handley's Fun and Fast Speed Math Method.
I like his Speed Math method as it is stress free, simple and fast and so much easier to get the correct answer everytime!

This instructable shows the new recipe I developed for the abacus beads and how
I constructed the abacus from wood in under an hour. The beads took a few days to dry thoroughly.

After several experiments with the Cold Porcelain Clay recipe, I accidentally
discovered a good recipe for making beads. Previously, everything seemed
to crack and shrink and warp the next day.

This new recipe (modification of the bird's next recipe and uses two additional ingredients)
can be used for millefiori beads as well, which I'll put up some examples soon. This new recipe dries a
lot faster, after 30 minutes without cling wrap it was drying out. It took a week to dry thoroughly
and shrank a bit.

And the best part, I must say is - no baking necessary! You can keep the colours separate
so your design will have consistent harmony to your artwork, you can make
canes and even millefiori with greater ease and even skinner blends through a pasta machine.

This instructable will show you how to make mixed media beads with the new Cold Porcelain Clay recipe (3rd version).

Watch the high definition tutorial below:

Extra Sticky Cold Porcelain Clay Recipe :

1 cup cornflour
2 cups pva (wood) glue
3/4 cup water
2 tbl glycerine



Mix water and glue in pot. Boil on medium heat for 2 minutes. (This helps boil off the alcohol)
Stir in cornflour mixed with a bit of water, and remaining ingredients.

** You might also wish to microwave all ingredients in a bowl for one minute. First place in bowl of boiling water, glycerine, pva wood glue. Sitr until gelatine crystals and cream of tartar is dissolved. Stir in flour then microwave for 1 - 2 minutes. Cover with plastic. Knead when cool.

Leave overnight till less sticky (preferably a week) and ready to use.

An easier option that's quicker than 2-minute noodles in a cup - mix all dry ingredients together then add boiling water and wet ingredients. Knead well, adding more cornstarch as needed.

NB: This recipe resulted in a sticky mixture which is difficult to handle,
but simply knead in 70 - 50% more flour after cooking, it has a great texture.

Knead thoroughly to work the gluten in the cornstarch into a lovely pliable dough.

The added bonus to using the larger pva ratio in this recipe was no cracks!

Later I experimented with another mixture where I mixed playdough recipe with 1/4 ratio of
the sticky cold porcelain clay then kneaded both together adding 40 % more cornstarch flour.

They held their form well, but the real test is in a few days how much distortion or shrinkage will occur.
UPDATE - ration of 2:9 for playdough and cold porcelain clay might result in a better mix. The beads distorted
and turned into lumpy looking rocks. If that is the effect your looking for, this clay is it.

This 'clay' dries quickly in direct sunlight, though indoors stays sticky for days.
Its more economical also since less cornflour and pva wood glue is needed.

Here's the ingredients:

Playdough Recipe
2 tbl tartaric acid
3/4 cup salt
3 cups water
4 cups plain flour

Bring water, salt and tartaric acid to simmer. Once salt crystals dissolved turn of heat and add flour.
Stir with wood spoon until smooth. Cook at medium heat until a dough forms. This method tends to
have less lumps and results in a smoother mixture.

Cold Porcelain Recipe
1 cup water
2 cups PVA wood glue
1 cup cornstarch flour

Mix water and glue in pot well first. Add cornstarch. Turn on meadium heat until a sticky gluey mixture forms.
Turn off heat, add 1/4 more cornstarch flour and stir well with wood spoon. It should result in a sticky dough.

Make playdough and cold pocelain (3rd recipe) separately.
Remove from stove. While still warm knead 1/3 cold porcelain mixture together with 2/3 playdough mixture.
Knead in extra 1/4 cup of cornflour till dough is pliable.
The resulting dough is wonderful for rolling with pasta machine and rolling pin.

I found some scraps of golden ribbon, silks and interesting patterned fabrics.

You could also use printed images from your colour printer.

Roll clay which has rested overnight (or a week preferably) with 60 -100% more cornstarch.
You'll find that the clay remains slightly sticky yet quite manageable.

Colour your clays as you like. I used gouache and black inks.

Dust the work area with a bit of cornflour to prevent sticking. Form beads by rolling with hands or rolling pin.

You might like to experiment with skinner blends or stamping and embossing or nail polish for special effects.

After collecting some bits and pieces of coloured fabrics,
I had to decide how to arrange them on the bead.

I wanted the golden pattern to sit facing the front.
That way, they will contrast a row of plain textured and coloured beads clearly.

Use a bit of watered down pva wood glue to stick the fabric to the freshly made beads.

Other designs I used watered down pva glue to attach tiny asparagus and fava bean
flowers to the bead. The pink and blue design was pushed through a pasta machine
to create a skinner blend.

I was really surprised with the texture of this clay as it was great to work with and
did not stick and the colours remained separate so I could make several beads
patterned identically. Aft drying several days these beads
have few cracks. I noticed more cracks in over floured pieces.

The last photo shows an example of the mushy texture of the clay minus gelatine and tartar.
The colours tend to mush together. This was the 2nd recipe - which works well for bird's eggs.

Now poke a hole through the bead with a thin wire or the flat end of a floured bamboo stick.

Later, I will varnish the beads with Diamond Glaze once they are dried thoroughly.

I found some scraps of golden ribbon, silks and interesting patterned fabrics.

You could also use printed images from your colour printer.

Roll clay which has rested overnight (or a week preferably) with 60 -100% more cornstarch.
You'll find that the clay remains slightly sticky yet quite manageable.

Colour your clays as you like. I used gouache and black inks.

Dust the work area with a bit of cornflour to prevent sticking. Form beads by rolling with hands or rolling pin.

You could also embed things into the coloured clay then seal with Diamond Glaze to give a glassy appearance to your beads.

I chose a simple colour scheme for the beads, black, lime and blue.
Later I will glaze them with a gloss varnish, but I quite like the matt look as well.

The colours were made by mixing food colouring into the clay. For the black clay,
I mixed a few drops of Chinese ink into the clay. This clay mixture has a small
amount of play-dough added to the cold porcelain clay. I noticed the
play-dough shrinks a lot less than the cold porcelain clay.

Materials

wood
saw
pva glue
hand drill
toothpicks
bamboo skewers

First I measured a bit of wood so that it would fit around 10 rows to fit the clay beads.

Then I marked the distance to place the bamboo sticks. Next drilled a hole large enough to
fit the bamboo skewers in later.

Next time for drilling.

I noticed various designs possible to make the abacus stand firmly on a desktop.
This was the design that I came up with after looking at the bits of wood I'd chopped up.

First I marked holes to insert toothpicks to create a mini dowel join. I think this may
strengthen the join. Later I may add an L-brace for extra support.





.

Next I put a bit of pva wood glue at the joints and pushed the feet to the sides.
Then I stuck on a bit of sticky tape to temporarily help support the drying pieces.

Next, I pushed in the bamboo skewers at the drilled marked spots. Pushed four earthly
beads and one heavenly bead as this abacus will follow the Japanese soroban design.

You might wish to add a bit of glue if using wire instead of bamboo.

There you go - all done in an hour or so!