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Friday, June 4, 2010

there's good news and there's bad news


The success I had on the blog yesterday left me anxious to try the bead again with modifications, namely making a DH reducing frit blend, substituting Triton for the reducing glass and Terra 2 for the striking glass, and replacing the sis with plain ivory. I managed all three and even got better striking on the Terra 2 and the silver foil/frit underneath to show a little (the frit blend on top of foil pits a bit, by the way). What I forgot is that sometimes encasing yellow glass causes the bead to crack.
The bead was successfully made and annealed and removed from the mandrel. There were no thermal issues. I was holding it in my hand preparing to clean it and I felt and heard a pop. I was then holding 2 pieces of bead, cracked not along the hole but diagonally across it. I then remembered that yellow glass and opalino are both notorious for being difficult to encase. Ah. Back to the drawing board.
I did have one small success. Giddy with the good luck I had the day before striking Terra light, I decided to make a bead out of Terra 2 and see if it would strike. And it did! It's the one on the right. The one next to it is the end of the rod I made the twistie from, as a way of doing something interesting with the glass and leaving a clean end for next time.






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