Red on a hothead ?

[Lynnybobs]

Had some shed time yesterday and decided to work with red, white and blue seeing as the jubilee is coming up.

Had real trouble with the red - effetre medium red.
It was fine as decoration but when I tried (several times) to make a base bead in the red it just kept kind of splitting?

The bead was in the flame and I was trying to get it into shape and it just opened up along the line of the mandrel line and fell off.
Really weird as have never had that happen before - any ideas whats going on ?

[sarah t]

my first thoughts would be bead release getting into the glass , not enough heat to make the initial footprint stick when applying the glass to the mandrel or a combination of them both

i have had the odd bit of pulling away but its usually round the ends when the bead release sometimes comes off and gets caught when pressing etc but never a whole bead 

[ScarletLeonard]

Not much help because I have never used med. red
But to open up like that it does sound thermal...very strange if you have it in the flame, I did have it happen once before with another colour but I know with that one was because I was decorating and at that point I was being far to careful on my dot application and it was out of the flame for far to long.

However on the HH I did get a lovely red out of striking red, just put down an opaque as a small base then layer over the striking red and then strike it for a gorgeous red. Or CiM valentine is also beautiful though that wasn't realeased until I had upgraded so not sure how that will come out.

[Shirley]

Two things spring to mind - that you need to heat your bead release more thoroughly before you apply your glass, and that the bead might be cooling and cracking along the mandrel line, just as Scarlet said, really.

Either way, just take it slowly and carefully and see what happens.

Want a nice red? CIM sangria, or Effetre 432 - the crimson.