Tom, I really like the look of your beard with the low hanging bead and have been giving it thought for myself. As an experiment I found a stiff/thick o-ring out in the garage with about a .5" hole and thought that might look good. So I took your suggestion and tied to pull my beard though with some dental floss, but it was too tight and I wasn't willing to pull that hard on the hair.

When pulling the hair through a bead, you're initially pulling a double amount of hair and since my beard is quite kinky, it's really springs apart. If it was that tight trying to go though .5", how the heck do you get a .25" bead on? Felt like the floss was going to slice the hair off.

~ Full beard since 1977