ooooo, you should see what’s in the kiln!!!! i think they worked!!! i’m sure of it. darn, i want to see them now! right now! i can’t wait until morning!
there’s a couple of ideas that have been floating around in my tiny brain for a while. some i’ve played with, like the pandora style beads. so far there has been technical issues with them. like i fried them. sigh. but today, today all was magic. the light was right, the temperature was good, my audio book was brilliant, it worked. at least some of them did i think. but i won’t know until tomorrow morning. you see after i melt the glass and shape it in the torch i have to anneal the beads. it’s like tempering. the temperature of my torch (a nortel mid-range for the technically minded) is approx. 1700 degrees. if you take the bead out of the flame and just leave it there, kaboom, thermal shock and it cracks. so once it’s out of the flame and has stopped glowing i pop the bead into my kiln. the kiln sits at 940 degrees. at the end of the day i start the ramp down process with the digital controller and it cools down slowly, about 100 degrees an hour to room temperature. this means the glass is annealed (or tempered) and won’t shatter. it also means that i don’t get to see what i’ve made until the next day. all i can do is sit here and stare at the closed door and wonder, did the cufflinks work? please glass fairy? make it so.