White butterfly disaster has struck!!!!!!!!

Hmmm, well I had better come clean on here when things go.....er...... astray too!

I have been thinking about the butterfly murrini and colours and stuff and thought that I would make a white butterfly with green lobes.... hopefully it won't look like a moth dressed up as a butterfly, but it would be worth a play around at any rate.

I made the graduated green lobes which was fine and they came out really nicely. I dedided that I would put yellow surrounded by some clear for the small dots on the wings to try and make it sort of "delicate" and that turned out quite well. I made a couple blue/green dots for some extra oomph and they came out ok..... see for yourselves, this pic taken this morning just before attempting to put together for the final pull!

Being lazy and yet, in a bit of a hurry, I decided to ramp my kiln up very quickly and to avoid some crack-a-lacking when introduced into the flame put it on 560C. Well, rather than let the components soak somewhat at this temp I just couldn't wait and as soon as it it the top temp I got my first part out......... Crack time.... yep, huge big splitting nearly in half nasty cracks with bits falling off and completely ruining one half of my cane. Needless to say I was grateful for the kids all being at school, because there was some nasty swearing (even the FG one - F#@ Glass).

Once I had killed most of that side of the butterfly I was then left thinking..... what the hell do I do now? I decided to pop it back into the kiln and see if there is some decent slices to be had off the cane for fusing or polishing and left the other intact cane in there and put the lot back through a long annealling cycle. I am going to cut the one good half in half again and try putting those together in a more measured and careful manner.

Remember folks..... the murrini never forgives and is a card holding member of the Murphy's Law of cocking up!!!!!

NOT HAPPY!!!!!!