encasing?

[♥♥Tan♥♥]

[glassworks]

mmmmmm....... sweeties!!!!

[Vicki]

Tan, those are gorgeous

[glassworks]

what she said 

[Mary]

Ooh, love the blue one! Such clear bright colour!

[Dora]

One thing I learnt about encasing is: after laying down the 1st stripe, all subsequent stripes must be pushed against the previous stripe as well as push on the base bead - this way you avoid leaving gaps in between (the core oozes out between the gaps and you have this unwanted line on the surface of your encasing). Usually for righthanders, work from left to right when laying the stripes. For lefties, just the opposite. Like most of you have mentioned, keep the base bead slightly cooler (it shouldn't be glowing red when you encase, that will cause the bead to go wonky) when encasing.

I also like to use a stringer to encase - I use ready-made stringers, they are about 3-4mm in diameter from Moretti. The only drawback is the clear Moretti (at least the huge batch that I've bought) is very heat sensitive and overheating causes scums like crazy. This means I draw back on my flame while encasing, the clear behaves well, stays clean and unscummy. Vetrofond may be offering clear stringers, I am not sure since I still have about 5kg of Moretti clear stringers to use up (it was greed when I first bought the stringers). I also use a lot of 'regular' (5mm) Vetrofond clear instead of Lauscha, as Lauscha is known for mixing up their glasses and you end up with incompatible glass which was used to encase your beads and they crack after about 3-7 days - that happened to an entire week's worth of work about 3 years ago. I no longer use Lauscha clear. Also, it is very important to clear your rods before dipping into the flame. The filth on the rods will also create scumming when heated.

Coincidentally, I decided to make a floral bead yesturday - I had wanted to check out my encasing again! The method of encasing is slightly different from what I have described above. I use a 'dumping' method. I dab huge globs of clear on the bead instead of encasing in stripes. After poking the centre of the flower, I put a huge glob of clear over the flowers - making sure that all petals are covered by that clear glob. After I have globbed all the flowers, I globbed in between the globs - gosh, this sounds like a tongue twister, is this difficult to understand?! I do not push the encasing with the graphite or brass paddle anymore - I am not good at that but I use the flame to make the bead round again.

There are several ways to encase, I could probably go on all night. Main thing is you have to like the techniques you use. What suits me may not suit you. Books like Cindy Jenkins' & Corina Tettinger's mention several techniques. Try them all out, make smaller beads to encase. It will take time but eventually you'd find out what's best for you.

Here is the result of the encasing I made. Two pictures taken at different angles.

[mams]

Thanks for your advice guys, but I think I'll give encasing a rest for a while, go back to it later!

Michelle.x

[Vicki]

Thank you dora, your bead is beautiful

[astringofbeads]

I have always found encasing really hard, and It's something I keep going back too, but I have had a bit of a lightbulb moment recently with the dumping method Dora describes. It's much easier to make sure you are covering the base. I make my base bead, and heep it warm just off the back of the flame and then I do small dots of clear over the base, and go round starting at the right hole side, dotting away like fish scales, slightly overlapping the last round of dots. I then use the flame to melt it all down. This way I've found you can get a nice thin layer of encasing, as with doing the stripe method I could never get it even, and ended up with the base colour bleeding at the edges. You really need to try different techniques and  you'll soon find one which works for you

[bubblefizz]

ohh Dora love that bead 

im ok encasing over a plain colour, but florals nope
i move the encasing with a tool but it STILL ends up moving the flowers aswell