Hi All,
Can someone please help me on striking glass? I'm having trouble getting any colour out of Effetre Electric Yellow, Orange and Opal Rose. The red comes out fine for me but for the life of me I can't get the colours out of the other ones. What am I doing wrong? I'm using a Nortel Minor torch.
Thanks,
Fiona
Maybe you can try this:
Make your bead using the glass you've chosen. Heat the bead really quite strongly until you get it to the shape and size required. Give everything a really good heat until the glass goes clear. You may have to heat this a little stronger than you think.
Remove from the heat and left the bead for perhaps 30-ish seconds completely out of the flame.
Return the bead to the very top part of the flame and "bathe" it in the flame until you start to see the colour forming. Once the glass has struck remove form the flame.
Usually with striking glass, people don't let the bead cool enough before they strike - though I have to agree striking orange is particularly hard to strike and you may have to experiment with striking the glass in different part of the flame to get it to really work well. But the above principle should work for most strikers.
Opal Rose is one of my favourite glasses.
Sally is correct, it has to be heated for quite some time, and after cooling, it also takes a while at the end of the flame, but the end result is worth it.
Don't be afraid of the striking orange. I recently made a set of 'bobbly' autumn jewels and the orange struck very dark, almost like a blackberry, which wasn't the result I was looking for. Upon removing from the kiln (510 degrees), the result was a rich transparent orange, exactly the colour I wanted.
I didn't use Electric Yellow, but the Uranium Yellow struck to a pretty almost lemony lime
Thanks Sal and Steph. Perhaps I'm not cooling the bead enough. I shall have another go with them all today. I think I have a rod of Uranium Yellow as well so shall try that too. :)
Thats helpful Sal. I need to revisit your dvds now I've changed torches! :)
Just wanted to say thanks for the advice Sal, I managed to get colour out of all of them except the Uranium Yellow which I shall try again soon. :)
I didn't think transparent uranium yellow strikes at all - when I use it, it stays the rod colour all the time, as far as I can tell ???
Pretty limey yellowy green.
That's all I get too but Linda said she struck hers so I thought I'd try it. Is it a striker or not?
It definitley went deeper for me. Maybe I burned it. I've burned glass before, namely Zachary (not a striker), TWICE!!! :'(
No matter how cool I work it..it keeps happening ???
Well as long as you got a nice colour out of it that's the main thing. :)