A method for heating/working the end of an optical fiber base material, which comprises a base material lower end working step (S2) of working the lower end of the optical fiber base material by heat-melting it in a lower heating furnace in a heating furnace, exposing the lower end of a core from the lower end of the base material, and working it into a shape of a melt-deformed portion required at wire-drawing, a step (S3) of removing unnecessary portions, a step (S4) of cooling and fixing the unnecessary-portions-removed lower end, a step (S6) of repeating the above steps until a desired melt-deformed shape required at wire-drawing is attained, and a base material extracting step (S7) of lowering a furnace temperature and taking out the optical fiber base material (7) from the furnace when the lower end of the base material is worked into the target shape. Adopting this invention can prevent, at an end working for wire-drawing an optical fiber base material used for optical fiber drawing, a residual strain otherwise occurring when the surface of an optical fiber base material is quenched while the lower end of the base material is formed into the shape of a melt-deformed portion required at wire-drawing. |