What do you hold small pieces of glass with?

[Gordon]

How about using Crocodile clips from EBay ( take the plastic off and adjust the front "teeth" )  and attach them to an old mandrel

[TheJanie]

For flatter glass, I use a pair of these: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/260727107555 - nice and cheap and just the job

[Trudi]

I melt rods together!

[Dee Dee]

I melt rods together too - couldn't bear to have shorts left over - it's now like second nature!

[Dragonfire Glass]

The (Alan & Sally) grippy will let you melt down to the last couple of centimetres comfortably - wonderful 

[Donna@Rockin' Beads]

I melt rods together too. It's a job for when the  kiln has to be moved on so we can go home at a reasonable time! Fairly therapeutic until you start on the shocky rods 

[Pat from Canvey]

For small stained glass pieces (say an inch), I use pliers, any old ones I have knocking around on my bench. For larger pieces, I put them in the kiln when cold and use the garaging program to heat them up. Take out using a stringer made from stained glass, any colour will do. Most Spectrum is compatible with itself and some uroborus. I've just picked up free, two bucketfulls of scrap from a studio in Surrey. I let her choose a focal bead from my collection though. Kate Drew Wilkinson uses scraps of stained glass and she makes fantastic beads. Larger pieces I cut into strips and use as a rod. Just as easy to twirl a strip as it is to do a rod.

[Donna@Rockin' Beads]

Kim, I think we just held the strips when you came for a lesson. That works fine as long as you don't let the flame shoot along the flat face of the strip.
I reckon any old pliers will work for the shorter pieces but try to melt a long strip on before it gets too short, then you won't have any problems holding the glass.
When are you going to show us some beads?
Come to think of it, aren't I supposed to be annealing a hundred for you as part of your starter kit? 

[Kimster]

Thanks for all the helpful replies everyone. I think it'll be a pair of old pliers & some of Sally & Alan's grippers!

Donna - I am managing the stained glass strips fine, it's the broken bottle pieces I wasn't sure about! You can see them when I learn how to put photos up !

I hadn't forgotten about the annealing, but I have now ordered a kiln (oh god oh god) and thought if I gat it all wrong it won't really matter with all my mis shapes etc.

Hope to see you soon!

[Donna@Rockin' Beads]

Ah, broken bottles. I think they're now on my 'I'm NEVER doing that again' list 
The holding isn't the problem for me, the shattering off of mahoosive chunks all over the studio is!!!
I hold the nasty little chunks of glass with my reverse action tweezers and watch them fly apart dangerously!!!

[Kimster]

Ah, broken bottles. I think they're now on my 'I'm NEVER doing that again' list 
The holding isn't the problem for me, the shattering off of mahoosive chunks all over the studio is!!!
I hold the nasty little chunks of glass with my reverse action tweezers and watch them fly apart dangerously!!!

Ah, praps I'll leave it till I've run out of other things to melt!

[Pat from Canvey]

Ah, broken bottles. I think they're now on my 'I'm NEVER doing that again' list 
The holding isn't the problem for me, the shattering off of mahoosive chunks all over the studio is!!!
I hold the nasty little chunks of glass with my reverse action tweezers and watch them fly apart dangerously!!!

Preheat broken bottle pieces in the kiln by putting them into a cold kiln and running your garaging program. Make a stringer from a piece of the same glass and use that by heating the end to stick it onto a bottle piece in the kiln before putting it to the torch.