My glass-working skills are rubbish.

I've been trying to make glass bubble tubes with common household items. I got some old T5 fluorescent tubes and dremeled a scratch at each end and snapped them fairly cleanly before cleaning the phosphor coating out by pushing a wad of paper towel through them with a rod.
Then I closed one end by heating it carefully with a gas blowtorch (starting slowly to avoid cracking) pulled it to close off the end and then allowed it to cool slowly by giving it a lick of flame from time to time. Then I poured in some rock salt and closed the other end by heating and pulling it into a narrow stem.
Alas, my glass working skills are terrible, and I'm not sure fluorescent tubes and blow torches are the ideal tools. It would be handy to have a proper hand held tipping-off torch with two small burners facing each other. It would also be better to have some traditional 10mm neon type glass tubing.