te-331

 Could I be getting better at striking silver colors on my hh?  It must be this glass.  Double Helix' te-331 looks so cool in the ad photo but I never get anything that looks like it.  And this doesn't. But it's closer than I usually get.  There is actually color there.  The bead will probably crack.  Both these beads are on Vetrofond black, which I'm finding does wierd things with application of silver glasses.  It gets a gunmetal type thing going on in the area the silver glass doesn't touch.  Naturally, this isn't visible on the photos I took and it does disappear when encased, but it could be neat on its own.  The top bead is unencased and all I got is a faint blue turquoise line, and that gunmetal thing.  The bottom is encased with Effetre clear, and it was tough to get it to strike again after I encased it, since what happened was that it went all greenish and only just started to go lavender and blue.

These are my efforts to do other things with this color, and I'll confess to taking quick and dirty pictures to get them before they cracked.  My best striking efforts to date, the 4th bead from the left, is already cracked and ready to go.  The first is unstruck, glass wound off and done.  The second I didn't allow to cool enough before attempting to strike it.  The third is overstruck and poop-colored.  I encased it in clear, hoping to shield it from reduction.  I saw the color change and opacity develop and, rather than starting all over again and heating it to clear, finished it off.  The 4th is encased in clear again, and I had such high hopes, but they were dashed.  The 5th is a self bead that wasn't quite right and the 6th is also a self bead and I tried to do it right but didn't get very far.

These are with a core of CiM tuxedo, a layer of te-331, and in the case of the bead on the right, a layer of clear.  In all these beads, the blue/green predominates, which is a sign that the ruby tones aren't being given the chance to develop by slow heating.  Still, these aren't ugly so I should count myself lucky.  TE-331 does tend to blend into clear, I'm noticing, at least when it doesn't crack.