Dicro Slide frit?

[noora]

Has anyone else tried using Dicro Slide frit on lampwork beads?

I just gave it a shot and it might work, but I couldn't figure out the best way to apply it. First I put some frit on a graphite surface (like you might do with silver foil), but the frit stuck to the graphite instead of the bead. Then I tried applying it with tweezers, but if I got the tweezers too close to the flame it melted and stuck on the tweezers. The method that worked best was to heat the bead, pick up a bit of frit with tweezers (or even by hand) and drop it onto the hot bead, then put the bead into the flame to make the dicro frit stick completely (and to burn away the binder, whatever it is... it smells funny when it burns).

Does anyone have a better method to share?

I don't know the end result yet as the bead is still in the kiln, but at least it looked a bit glittery before I put it in the kiln.

[Trudi]

Strange  - I've not tried it. But I have tried mashed up frit from dichroic glass and it didn't work too well.

Have you tried putting the frit on a different surface?

[garishglobes]

It sounds like very strange stuff! From what you are saying, it almost seems as if it doesn't really want to stick to glass.
Neither of these are likely to be that helpful, (sorry!!) but could you either roll a rod in water/some sticky substance and then in the frit to make it stick, then burn it onto the rod (likely to be near impossible because it will spit off  ) or stick some into a tube and melt it in that way then heat the air out, pull and use as glittery stringer (no idea where would sell 104COE tubing! It just sounds as if the frit is designed to be sandwiched between two layers of glass before heating).

[Ness]

Looks like it works best fused.  You could try picking some up on one side of a gather of clear and then swipe onto your bead heating the top (undichroed side).

( undichroed - of course it's a word!!)

[noora]

Well, the frit is designed for fusing, so I'm not overly surprised I'm just wondering if anyone has managed to make it stick to beads, as it would be a nifty thing to have dichroic stuff that isn't COE dependent and works on beads.

Once you get it to stick to the glass it stays there and doesn't even seem to burn off easily (except the binder that burns off completely). I think the main problem is that the binder melts easily and sticks to tools or surfaces before it sticks to the glass. After I burned off the binder from my tweezers I could simply wipe off the dichroic dust (the dichroic dust itself doesn't stick to metal), and I could easily wipe off the residue from my graphite surface after it cooled.

If it's the same binder as they use in Dicro Slide paper, water might soften up the frit into mush that you can put on a rod. Thanks, that's an idea worth trying

[Dragonfire Glass]

Looks like it works best fused.  You could try picking some up on one side of a gather of clear and then swipe onto your bead heating the top (undichroed side).

that's what I would suggest too 

[awrylemming]

If it doesn't work, drop me a pm, and I'll send you a rod of seeded glass, which is a tube. x

[Hotglass28]

Make two large paddles from clear.  Snap off the paddles and sandwich the dust inbetween. Make sure the dust is not on the edges.  Pick up the sandwiched paddle doodad with pliers and seal the edges in the flame.  You may need two pliers or tweasers, or attach a punty to the sealed area. once you done this you can mash out the whole lot thin, and apply that way.

Play about with it, it will burn out easy if your not careful.

HTH

[noora]

With a lot of coercing, patience and funny burning smells I managed to get dicro slide to stick to beads long enough to be encased. Water didn't help, so in the end I simply dropped flakes onto a hot bead and hoped at least a few of them would stick. Once they stuck enough to start burning off the binder the dichroic powder stayed long enough to be encased.

I don't know if it's worth the trouble though. I got some neat dichroic colours but so faint that you'll have to look closely to see it. Here's a photo of my results. The stripes and blotches are mostly because of my poor encasing skills.