Double Helix on propane only?

[sparrow]

Hi everybody, since going bulk propane only, my limited successes with double helix glass have dimished to.....nothing. Nyx and Kronos stay their (admittedly rather nice) blue, and Terra (what's left of it) is just a non-descript brown/blue sludge. Aion is a very light beige sludge, and none of them do anything at all. Can it be done on propane only? I haven't touched them since the first week-end when I switched to bulk - I don't mind experimenting, but it's a bit expensive if it turns out I'd better wait until I get my grown-up set-up.

[Isabelle]

Hi Sabine,
It's perfectly possible - it just takes longer than you'd think! Cover the air inlet holes in your HH so you have a big bushy yellow flame and hold your bead far out in the flame - a lot of the tutorials I've read say ' waft' in and out - i found it took longer than that. Terra is different, that needs the same heating/cooling that raku does. Good luck!!

[garishglobes]

I moved to bulk propane about 3 months ago. Best thing I ever did, without being able to afford something more grownup! For the first 2 months I worked on the set-up I had put in. It had much lower pressure than the Mapp gas but I assumed that was inevitable with Propane. With the Double Helix, I got good results with Kronos, Nyx and Gaia but sludge with Aion. Terra, which had been really good, suddenly became impossible to get anything out of!
A month ago, I got a friend who happens to be a plumber to check my set-up. He put on a 4bar regulator and kept the narrow (high pressure) hose so it would go over the torch adapter nipple. He put PTFE tape in all the right places and my little torch has suddenly become a Mega-Burner!! Terra just takes one look at this new flame and behaves like an angel. So it might be worth checking your set-up.
With a propane only flame being that bit more reducing (I'm told) you might be over-reducing the Aion? That was the advice given to me, and actually it does work a lot better if you accept that the hot head is reducing it a bit anyway, and don't go overboard on doing too much more.

[sparrow]

Thank you both - I'll do some more experimenting today, with both the set-up and the glass - good to know that my cheap set-up doesn't mean the end to fancy colours! 

[*rowanberry*]

To get nice stuff out of Aion often depends on what you put it on top of. Try a thin coating over it on top of trans cobalt blue. Sometimes it has reacted with me just by striking - and not reducing at all. You could pull it into stringers and try randomly melting it over things?

I tried most DH glass on a HH whilst helping someone out teaching - and it is possible - but I did it with the holes half covered up, not fully and it did better.

as for Terra - it like being worked HOT so you might not be able to do it quite so easily on a HH.