Proportions for Silvered Ivory

[Beansprout]

Silvered Ivory. I try batches of stringers every now and again, and maybe one or two out of half a dozen I'd consider successful.

I was wondering what sort of proportions of ivory (dark or normal?) / silver (leaf or foil?) and whether you use clear in the middle.

I probably melt 1/2 inch of dark ivory over itself maybe 4 times, so that it looks like this... ----EE (yea crap I know), then wrap a layer  of silver (two if the silver isn't being too much of an arse), then I stretch a stringer oot. This doesn't give me as much "oomph" as I'd like. By "oomph", I mean crazy reactions- I love the webbing effect.

What kind of recipe do you guys use?

[Kalorlo]

Dark ivory and silver leaf. My leaf booklet is cut into quarters lengthways, so I roll one of those strips around the end of the rod, so there's roughly an inch covered with more than one layer. I do that with the rod cold and a bit wet so the leaf sticks, usually. Then heat and burnish it on, melt it all in and let the ivory squoosh about over itself a few times before pulling.

Then after applying it to the bead, heat it a lot and it'll spread and web more.

[Amber]

More or less the same as Heather, except that I use foil (I find it much easier to handle) and I warm the rod slightly before wrapping it in the silver 

[sarah t]

melt a blob of dark ivory about the size of a large pea ,let glow go ,roll in a third of the page strip of sliver foil,burnish on with marver or tweezers(whatever is easy to reach  ),reheat blob,let cool slightly and pull using tweezers 

[awrylemming]

I do it the same way as Sarah, except I use light ivory as I prefer the more subtle effect.

[micpru]

 Dark ivory with a little burnishing and spreading seems to work well.  Some colours are better than others  CIM Martini, Pink, white seem to work well. Black doesn't seem to spread as well.

[SilverGems89]

pretty much the same as Amber for me, heat the rod (always dark ivory) slightly (though not until glowing or molten) along its length, roll in 1/3 of a sheet of silver, burnish on (usually using a graphite paddle), melt part covered in silver into a gather, cool for a few seconds, pull stringer

occasionally if i have any scraps of silver leaf lying around i will add those to the mix too, for extra silvery-ness 

[Beansprout]

Brilliant, thanks everyone Sounds like I'm using too much ivory and not enough silver!

Micpru, when you say other colours are better than others, do you mean instead of Ivory, or the base colour of the bead? Eff. blues do very nicely with the sis

[k00m]

You definitely get a different reaction depending on whether you use Dark or Light Ivory and whether you use Silver Leaf or Foil, so it might also be worth trying the different combos out as well as adjusting how much glass you melt.

[Oenone]

I usually tear a sheet of silver foil into four pieces, and make four stringer pulls in a sitting, putting some aside because I'm not super-fond of pulling stringer and want to get a bunch of it out of the way at once. 

I melt about 1/4 of my dark ivory rod into a big ball, and then roll that in the foil.  I burnish the foil on, heat everything back up and then pull the whole mass into 1-2mm stringer. I usually need to use my whole armspan for this, but it gives me great stringer, reduces the amount of actual stringer pulls I need to do and stretches out my supply of silver foil.