I have a pattern I like to tie, many of you have seen it, that uses a spaghetti bead to make the shape of the body under a crocheted lace. The problem I have is that cutting the slot in the beads to get the on the shank takes a LONG time and is rarely a good cut right off the bat. This leads to more cutting, trimming and cleaning up the cut to get it to go onto the hook shank.

I also will take the bead and literally sand off 2/5 of the bead to expose the hole through the middle to put it on the hook shank. This takes even more time than cutting them but less time cleaning them up.

I have tried a Dremel but it melts the bead too much and makes a bigger mess. Small hand saws for hobby work are okay but the slot is often too small for larger hooks.

Anyone have any suggestions to speed up either technique? I like to use both for different ties and different body shapes but 5 minutes a piece or more just to get the bead ready really makes it hard to tie any real numbers of the jigs and flies. Not to mention my shaky hands make everything so much harder to get just right.

Only thought I have had and not tried it taking some sort of string saw, inserting it into the bead and cutting from the inside out. Problem is I can't find the string saw blades anywhere now that I actually want to find them.