I'm not sure if this is the correct forum to post this but here goes. I hear people talking about striking colours could someone please expand on this. When buying rods, I am using effetre, does it tell you if it is a striking colour?
Frederick
A lot of the discussions about striking colours will be referring to "special" glass - silver glass, raku, chalcedony, where you are trying to coax a variety of colours. Effetre has a small range of striking colours, transparent red, yellow, orange and rubino, but they are all easy compared to the special glasses. They look pale or clear in the rod, but colour appears when you heat them. If they go clear while you are working them, just cool and reheat gently and the colour reappears. They are a wee bit temperamental, red can go muddy if it's overworked, and rubino can lose all its colour if you overheat.
You will generally find that most reds / yellows / oranges will strike to a degree.
If you try and make a row of spacers you'll find that they can all be different colours - but you can strike them to the same shade (she says - easier in theory than practise!)
Most stores seem to have a note saying that "this is a striking colour" in the description. You'll often see it in the picture too, it shows the tip of a rod and the tip has a different colour than the rest of the rod.
The shop descriptions confused me when I started out; when I was choosing colours and saw the description 'this is a striking colour' I thought they were doing a sales pitch and that it was striking to look at ::) :D :D
I used to strike one end of the rods when I got them to make it easier to see which was which, as before struck the red, orange and yellow eff. rods look very similar to their light amber.
Fred, you just made me chuckle, I was remembering years ago when I bought striking frits, when I received them I couldn't see what was so striking about them, they were just plain old colours ;D ;D
You can get striking frits and rods in the reichenbach range, along with the reds and yellows previously discussed these include some of the iris colours that will strike to a metallic sheen. I have found with these though the effect is best if the frit is left raised if you have a look here
http://www.tuffnellglass.com/contents/en-uk/d57.html
You will see that a lot of these are striking. The reds and yellows are to get the true colour and the rest are to get the metallic sheen.