Plastic cylinders are tools used to shape wires into frames for petals and leaves. Nylon is then wrapped around the frames.
Plastic cylinders comes in 8 sizes and the ones that you use depends on the size of the petals or leaves that you want to make.
For those learning nylon craft, you may want to buy a complete set of 8 cylinders as these cylinders are used repeatedly and having a complete collection means you can make flowers of all sorts of sizes.