Bead spinners

[prrrn.livejournal.com]

What's your experience with bead spinners? I want to make beaded lampshades, which requires getting a lot of beads onto wire. I've tried creating a homemade one using the instructions here. It works okay, but it will still take a really long time to get many yards of beads onto wire. I timed it and figure it takes about 7 minutes to string a foot. Is this normal? Is there something I can do to speed it up? Would a real bead spinner be a lot faster?

If you've used a real bead spinner, which one did you get? Do you like it? And how long does it take to string the beads?