beadmaking

Tip and Techniques: Making Your Own Shards

One of the more recent decorating styles for beadmakers has been to incorporate glass shards as a decorative element. If you don’t know what a shard is, it is a piece of a very thinly blown glass bubble. Read more

In Search of the Perfect 104 Clear

The perfect clear glass rod is the holy grail of beadmakers. A perfect clear should resists scumming and be optically free of streaks and bubbles.  This said, the perfect clear is hard to find and there are many more clears to choose from on the market these days.

A lot of beadmakers are tired of picking the scum and bubbles out of the clear glass that comes from Italy.  One way to improve the cleanliness of your clear rods is to wash your rods in your dishwasher and many beadmakers swear that it helps a lot.

Larry Scott developed a technique for good clear. He places his clear rods in pickling solution that is used to take the scum off of silver after it has been soldered. He uses the solution at 1/3 to ½ the strength you would to pickle silver, in a long Pyrex baking dish that can hold the 13” rods comfortably covered with solution.  The pickling solution works best if it is warm and leave the glass in the solution for a while, an hour or so (experimenting with time lengths is always a good thing to do).  When you take the glass rods out of the solution, thoroughly rinse the glass and let it dry standing up on its ends so the water slides off.

The two Italian glass factories that provide a lot of the glass available to beadmakers have tried to make a better clear over the past 10 years, but their efforts have still fallen short of what most beadmakers would consider a perfect clear.  The cleaning techniques that I mentioned above help to improve the cleanliness of the Italian clear glasses, but I have heard many complain that it still falls short of what beadmakers would like.

There are a number of new efforts by newer glass factories like CiM, Double Helix, Troutman Art Glass and Precision 104. All these companies make good clear glass, with CiM being the only one that is competitively priced with the Italian glass.  Some beadmakers still complain that CiM clear is not perfect enough, but the factory goes out of its way to hand wrap the clear glass rods to prevent scratches and dirt accumulation.

Double Helix, Troutman Art Glass and Precision 104 have all produced premium clear with a premium price tag.  I hear various complaints about these clears also, but from personal experience, I find they are superior to what the Italians make and a whole lot easier to use.  The biggest complain about these premium clear glass rods is the price.

If you have come up with a system to improve the clarity of any of the available clear rods on the market, by all means please leave a comment on this blog.

Aether by Double Helix can be acquired in "Artist Points" store at Frantz Art Glass.

Paddle made with CiM / Messy Color Clear.

Paddle made of Diamond Clear by Precision 104.

Bead made with Clarity- Super Clear by Troutman Art Glass.

Paddle made with Vetrofond Clear.

Paddle made with Effetre Clear.

Tips and Techniques: Dichroic on Copper

I am a die hard dichroic fan, but I had not paid much attention to the CBS Dichroic on Copper Sheet because at first I couldn’t get my head around it.  When I first saw some dichroic on copper sheet, it was Silver and it just didn’t catch my attention.  Recently I was shown a dichroic on copper sheet that was a pattern called “Mixture” that has soft blues and pinks in it as well as silver and I said to myself – WOW, this stuff is really neat looking.  I had a sheet that had been slightly broken up and the bag was full of cool looking dichroic bit-shards.  The dichroic shards really got me motivated to make some beads with it and I really like the results.

Dichroic on copper sheet with loose bit-shards.

Loose dichroic bit-shards on graphite pad.

You have to be careful when you open the bag of Dichroic on Copper and have a sheet of paper under the bag to catch any shards that might flake off.  I put the dichroic shards that I had on a graphite pad that I use for rolling up shards on to beads and it works really well.

The dichroic on copper sheet was designed to provide dichroic that can be put on any glass, so you don’t have the problem of matching the glass you are using with what ever the dichroic is coated on.  Another great thing about the dichroic on copper is the fact that the dichroic layer on the copper is 3 times thicker than any other way that dichroic is normally applied.  The thicker coating makes the dichroic much more durable and less likely to burn to that gray scum that everyone hates.

Bead made with dichroic shards from copper sheet.

The copper sheets also allow the artist to cut patterns or strips of dichroic in the sheet and roll the dichroic right up off the copper onto a hot bead or other lampworked form.

CBS (Coatings by Sandberg) has a good instructional video posted on the web that is good to watch and it provides some great working points that help in using this product.  If you have never seen dichroic on copper used, I recommend watching this short educational video on the Sandberg website.

In case you are wondering what to do with the sheet of copper once you have used all the dichroic, the copper is of a thickness and quality that it can be used to apply cut out patterns of copper on to a bead.  I have seen some stunning examples of this technique and highly recommend giving it a try.

Dichroic shards on bead made with CiM "Electric Avenue and Gunmetal.

Vetrofond - the Other Italian Glass Factory

Most beadmakers have heard of the Effetre (Moretti) glass factory on Murano near Venice, Italy, but fewer beadmakers know about the other Italian 104 COE glass rod manufacturer Vetrofond.  Vetrofond is located across the lagoon from Venice on the main land in a suburb of Mestre, which is the main industrial port of the area.

Cullet Storage Yard at Vetrofond

Carts of Glass Rods at Vetrofond

Vetrofond is mostly involved with making custom modern looking blown glass lamp fixtures, but they have a large set up for producing 104 COE glass rods.  In past years, they have gone out of their way to produce interesting limited runs of odd lot colored rods for the international lampworking community, like River Rock, Parrot Green, Poppy, Ocean Green, Frosty Blue and Key Lime.

Currently, there is a huge selection of odd lot colored glass rods made by Vetrofond with names like Cosmic Storm, Jupiter,Seashell Swirl, Dark Lichen, LemonMeringue, Orange Punch, Yellow Ice, Jungle Twilight, and Sweet Lime.  There are over 50 odd lot glass rod colors from Vetrofond that greatly extends the color palette of glass beadmakers.

Jupiter with Triton & Dark Pink

Vetrofond Transparent Yellow with Triton and Goldstone

Vetrofond has a very unassuming front to the building which masks the intense levels of activity going on inside the factory.  It is a factory which is both dangerous and thrilling to see in operation with hot furnaces, huge metal equipment and lots of organized glass shards.  There is such a swirl of activity that it is mind boggling.

I have personally made only a modest dent in the huge selection of available Odd colors from Vetrofond, but I have been please with the results none the less. All of Vetrofonds colors are compatible with other 104 COE glasses and I highly recommend that every beadmaker take a spin through the Vetrofond palette, for the adventure that is contained within each glass rod.

Nyx over Vetrofond Emerald Green

Vetrofond Seashell Swirl, Ivory & Black