Hurray!

Today has been a great day!

Joe started his new job at Home Depot this morning!

The thermocouple for my kiln arrived today, is installed and the kiln is firing well as I type!  I'm going to make beads soon!

Found Treasures

The thermocouple on my kiln was damaged when I moved so no new beads until next week when the new one comes in, which has me down in a big way.  I did manage to find a few sets of beads that I hadn't listed yet when I moved, so I can have some new things.  I'll ration them out, I think.

My favorite, made with Devardi Aurora frit on CiM Peace.

I really like the delicate color on them.  It's a tough call which I like better, the Aurora on copper green or Peace.

The Effetre streaky denim spacers and indigo hollows I blogged about last week, and I'm not looking forward to trying to get some usable photos of the hollows.  They are lovely and I was going to make them into earrings for myself.  I still might.

I have a second Etsy shop, Fire in Ice Baubles, for handmade findings and non-lampwork jewelry and I made some very cool beads for earrings to demonstrate some dark silver plum headpins I made.  I'm really digging the way the beads look with the copper head pins and end caps.

The beads are a base of Effetre Spring Willow with Double Helix scrolls.  I thought the spring willow would do that wild orange thing it does but apparently this time it decided not to.  It didn't blush much either.  I love the unpredictability of this color!  I made these beads the same day, with the same rod and some blushed and some didn't.

Check out the first spacer to the right of the focal.  Half went orange and the other half pink.  So cool!  If anyone knows why it does what it does, let me know, otherwise I'll have all kinds of fun trying to figure it out on my own.

Moving In Part 2

Today is a bit of a bittersweet post.  My new studio is all set up.  Here it is

The only fly in the ointment is that the thermocouple on the kiln was damaged during the move and I had to order a new one.  It will come next week and I can wait until then but I'm not a happy camper.  Imagine the scene.  I've spent the day scrubbing and toiling with the reward of a couple precious hours of torch time.  I fire up the kiln and commence to dip mandrels.  Nothing happens and that dreaded tcL message appears on the display.  I knew what to look for this time and it didn't take long to find the problem.

Dragonjools had written a post about it here
http://dragonjools.blogspot.com/2012/04/kiln-troubleshooting.html
and it was a quick and ready reference I was grateful for.

I still made a few beads and cooled them in the annealing bubble I use for demos.  Small beads for my own use that I won't care if they break.  I've got more of the glass I used to make them and will be able to if they don't hold up.  I just had to make something.  More glassy posts when the part arrives.

New Jewelry and Hope

 It's been a couple months, but I finally have something to say.  I have made the odd spacer or two, for my own consumption since I don't feel comfortable selling beads that may crack.  I haven't been enjoying lampworking though since my lack of a way of annealing them properly and the loss of some really nice beads has put a damper on my creativity.  I've also been getting used to working with a pair of diddys.  The soda flare never really bothered me but I talked to an eye doctor about torchwork and she scared me into buying a pair.  I don't know whether it's the lack of the cue of the soda flare or being rusty, but suddenly all my beads were coming out lopsided and I was having the devil of a time with all kinds of other basic issues.  I've finally worked out my shaping, heat control and stringer placement issues and produced the necklace, bracelet, and earrings above.

I lost some weight and my wardrobe needed an update, and purple is one of my favorite colors, so I needed some nice jewelry to go with the new duds.  I like the way these colors come together and have always favored many different shapes in one color group.  The set is made up of CiM Thai orchid, Effetre silver plum light and dark and a few violet transparent.  For decoration I mostly used black metallic with some CiM tux, which has a different kind of reaction with the Thai orchid I used it over.  I restocked headpins and finally got some that will work with 3/32" holes.  I didn't have them when I made this pair of earrings, hence the wirewrapping, but will have them when I get back to beadmaking for real next week.

I still have a bit of time for benchwork because I recently had minor surgery and am able to sit and torch but not walk around for extended periods or lift more than 10 lbs.  I'll have to have Joe set up my new annealer when it comes on Thursday.  I'm so amped.  It's brand new, straight from the factory and hasn't been ruined by anyone else first.  It says it can't be used for PMC but I think if I place a ceramic shelf that's all that is usable from my old kiln in it, it will work fine.  ANYONE WHO HAS ANY FEEDBACK ON THIS IDEA, PLEASE LEAVE ME A COMMENT.  After waiting so long for a proper annealer, I don't want to mess it up.  I haven't done PMC yet and can put it off indefinitely if it means I can make beads that won't crack.  I stole this picture of the chilli pepper I'm getting from the Heritage Glass site in my links.  They have some really good prices and ship really fast.  I had thought about the small Paragon due to its firebrick sides and floor, but decided on the extra bead space, since I can't see making only half a dozen beads and quitting for the day.

So, to sum up, I've been pretty busy.  I lost some weight, started taking better care of my eyes, had to relearn how to torch, had surgery and am looking forward to a new annealer and glass.  I even caught up on some of my housework.  Hope can give you so much energy.  Right now I'm hoping I can get a little momentum with the positive changes I've made to tackle some more of the stuff that's holding me back.

Online venting and wish list

 My frustrations today have been mounting.  I had a small health crisis this morning with an esophageal disorder I obtained 15 years ago as a result of not following the instructions on a prescription medication.  That having been sorted out I spent the morning trying to get in touch with the various medical providers and gatekeepers in my life.  I discovered much to my chagrin that I deleted the photo I've been using to log into people's sites and had to find a way to fix this.  I finally decided to just let what will be be and do beads.  My crockpot arrangement is working beautifully for the smallish beads I've been doing but I wish I could coax more out of my silver colors.  Per Double Helix the secret to using Caliope, Terra2, and Terra lite is to heat it to heck and cool, then reheat and I am not able to do this with my puny little hothead. 

 My apartment has rules against propane tanks for grills so they will not tolerate someone using a dual fuel torch on their premises, I'm fairly certain.  Moving is not an option, since I still haven't found a lot of the stuff I lost last time I moved.  I could possibly set up a studio in Joe's shop if I could clear out a corner and run electricity to it.  Did I mention it is unheated and we live in central NY?  and it's winter.  So this is my blog to vent my frustrations at the world in general.  Above is a Nortel mega minor that would allow me to fine tune the results from the glasses I would like to use, and to use boro glass, which I know won't work on a HH.  To the right is an oxygen concentrator that is not strictly necessary since tanked O2 is available wherever welding supplies are sold.  Below is the kiln I would like to get and which represents the only short term possibility on my wish list.  All I have to do is stop buying every darn glass that comes out and save up a couple bucks.

Please ignore this spate of negativity.  Today has been a rough day.  More bead pix tomorrow and my favorite show is on tonight.

spring cleaning

I have the habit of huge, unmanageable piles of stuff and just pushing what I don't want aside and making just enough room to work in, which isn't doing as far as glassworking is concerned.  It doesn't do much for the apartment in general but the table in particular is feeling the strain.  When some coworkers expressed an interest in what I'm doing, it was the last straw.  I have to clean up after myself.  The  picture to the left and below are the results of this.  The stash rack is going to need replacement since I have a compulsive need for more colors and this will be added to soon as soon as the next delivery.  I moved the annealing bubble into a crock pot on high, hoping to slow the cooling in the beads since the kiln isn't going to work out.

 Boy, isn't it.  I knew the pyrometer was cooked due to an overfire incident but thought it might be salvageable with common sense and pyrometric cones.  Not by a long shot.  The name should have been my first clue, in fact it was--Paragon quick-fire.  I set the dial on the power controller for the lowest setting with a pyrometric cone on the shelf and watched it like a hawk.  After 15 minutes I saw small wisps of smoke coming out from under the lid.  Propping it up just a tad allowed me to see that the pyrometric cone was smoking a little but unchanged in shape.  At 30 minutes a definite chemical smell was coming out of the kiln and I checked again.  Below is a picture of the resulting cone.

This is a #022 cone, the lowest in the line which is supposed to melt at over a thousand degrees at a fire rate of 270 degrees F an hour.  Overfired.  The instructions on the kiln state that large cones such as this may bloat and distort with too rapid firing but this doesn't look at all bloated.  It looks melted.  I can't trust this.  I'm going to burn the place down.  Looks like I'm going to have to save my pennies and buy a kiln the hard way.

the pause between breaths

I didn't do any beads today, as the favorite show was on, so here are some beads I made after Frantz Art Glass' DH sale. From left to right: Aion2 plain and encased, CE-352 (to be caliope) plain and encased, aurae plain and encased, triton plain and encased, and psyche plain and encased. All the plain beads were struck, or a reasonable approximation therof, and reduced, and all the plain beads except aion2 are a core of clear with the silver color on top, which shows very well on the psyche bead since, did I mention, I sock at encasing? The psyche is so dark it's hard to tell if it strikes or not. I hope to get some new lighting for photography soon since the lighting I am using really doesn't do justice to the colors. As far as the psyche bead goes, I think I like it much better unencased. I am starting to run low on the gas cylinder, and this makes a difference with how the glass behaves. I have trouble getting a really hot flame and striking even triton can be difficult if the gas is running out. I'm getting some of the TE-362(?) prototype soon, supposedly a duplicate of Terra2, and this post or another like it will appear when it does, as well as testing on various colors with the silver glasses. One reaction I'm very fond of is with Effetre mosaic blue and triton. As self stringers, mosaic blue is virtually identical to trans cobalt, in fact the only way I could tell them apart was to make them in different shapes. With triton, at least, encased, the mosaic blue fumed a delicious green and the bead is noticeably better.

The mosaic blue bead is second from the top and the plain cobalt one is on the bottom. I'm saving the mosaic blue for silver glass since at about 1 2/3 times the price it's just not worth using plain. Granted, it's nothing like silver glass, but still. The cobalt hasn't reacted to anything but peacock green and I do intend to test mosaic blue with other colors but until I test out the budget conscious used kiln I got I am not planning on using peacock green again.
The kiln I got is an early paragon with a wonky pyrometer that has trouble registering "low temperatures." I am not sure what that means so I've ordered some pyrometric cones to see if I can trust it at all. If I can't hold glass at a reliable temperature this isn't going to work. I'm good at math so I'll try to figure out the temperature per hour charts in the manual that came with the kiln. I have no problem whatsoever crafting jewelry for my own consumption that hasn't been properly annealed, but I am not going to try to sell it, which is the eventual goal.