I have a couple of ceramic bobbins with only one bead, and by looking you can see it isn't very polished or smooth. The Terra bobbins I have cost me $8 each and almost never break a thread unless I use uni 6/0 or get heavy handed. Hate the uni stuff I have, much better luck with the Danville threads. Ship, if you know of a program that would use these two I'm replacing I'll send em to ya and you can do as you see fit. They aren't the best but I guess they'd be OK for starters.