Making beads from sticks?

I need some wooden beads for an upcoming project.  

I have a lot of sticks and trees and stuff around the farm.

Can these two things be combined?  

I found this tutorial on how to make wooden beads from pithy wood.  I don't know what around the farm would qualify as the elderberries aren't thriving here.  But I like the shape of the beads very much.  I just want them a bit bigger.





This wiki has a different approach to making beads.  But I'm not a huge fan of electric tools - the noise bothers me.  I like the results and using them, it's just the noise.

So am I working with fresh cut wood?  And if so, how do I choose which type of wood?  I have to prune some fruit trees.  Would that work?  Or willow or is that too stringy?

And how to stop them splitting as they dry?  

A lot of plants that I prune in the spring have hollow stems.

Those would make nice beads though they might be small.

Bamboo is also hollow and would make some interesting beads.

I am looking forward to the other ideas that folks come up with.

Ah, very cool!  I love them.

I would try it with your fresh trimmings - much easier to work with than dry stuff.  You could trying using a vice to hold them upright, and a manual hand drill.

An old bodger's trick to dry evenly (thereby avoiding split/check/cracking) is to let them dry in a baggy of their own sawdust or shavings.  Another is to zap it quick in the microwave. (They heat from the inside-out.  I don't have one, but some folks say it works).

We grew job's tears a few years ago (Coix lacryma-jobi).  They are very fun for crafts - but also yummy for rodents.  Ask me how I know . . .

A local craftsman taught me how to make ladders using round wood and latias, a beautiful craft here in the Southwest. The holes in the posts (round wood) are made by forming a depression with a gouge, heating lava rocks in a fire. Using a shovel we set the hot stone on the indentation to char. When the stone is no longer burning the wood, remove the stone, clear away the char with a gouge then repeat until the through-hole is formed.
Using this burn-scrape-away-the-char method could work for beads. Instead of lava stones, how about heating the end of an iron bar or nail of the appropriate hole size, burn the wood, take out the char then repeat until you have an opening.
Let us know if you try this and if it works for you. Good luck with your project!

This thread reminds me of a wooden bead necklace that I inherited from my aunt.  I wish I still had a picture of it.

From memory, it seems the necklace was natural color with rectangular beads.

I thought I would look on Pinterest to see what different kinds of beads and only found round beads.  I could not find any beads like what that necklace was made of.

I like the beads pictured here much better than any I saw on Pinterest.  

That necklace is pretty just like it is as a natural color.

It would also be pretty dyed with some natural colors.