Fish murrini rescue success....... YAY!

Yup, I have been having an absolute ball melting glass lately. I just can't seem to get enough time at the torch although that then leads to the evils of NOT ENOUGH GLASS..... he he, not really true for me at the moment, but a gal always wants some more glass hey!

I decided that I hadn't done any decent murrini for quite a while and thought I might make a random bodgy sort of fish.... Really stupidly I decided to temp fate and make a fairly plain stripy one pull fish.... predominantly yellow (for those who aren't bitten by the lampwork bug, that was the stupid decision, to go with Yellow). Yellow it is commonly known amongst murrini makers is a naughty little bugger who loves to crackalack a lot after encasing in clear once pulled. Needless to say, I finished my pull (which incidentally was a beauteous thing to behold, one of those rod pulls that goes smoothly and evenly). I will admit that I had buggered about somewhat getting the resulting fat rod into the kiln and when I checked the next morning there was more "crack" than you'd find on a plumber....... it was pretty much completely crazed and cracked all over, yet still sticking together... mostly.

At this point.... thank goodness the kids had gone to school, but holding that cracked log of glass in my hands was a bit soul destroying after investing about 2hrs into it and about a lb of glass to boot. I ALMOST binned it or threw it on the ground in a huff, but fortunately decided to conduct a small experiment instead. I wondered if I carefully sawed it into bits then preheated it in my kiln at about 630 C (regular annealing temp for me is usually 515 C) then reintroduced it to the flame, cap it, heal the cracks and pulled to about 5mm diameter if my bodgy fish could be resuscitated at all....... YES indeed it could as it turned out. Pulling some murrini cane into 4-7mm diameter worked very well, they chopped up nicely and I now have a baggie of many, many fish murrini which is fine with me, if not the usual way I like to keep my murrini. I like to store my murrini in rods of about 4cm diameter then slice it up later and pull smaller if I want some bead or marble making sized slices

Here's a pic of some of the small slices I got off the cane, like I said it was a very simple slightly ugly fish murrini that was straight out of my brain as I went with no planning on shape or colour at all..... fairly obvious I am sure!

Its official, I am off unobtainium boro colour!

Yep, I have always loved the "sparkliness" of unobtainium in boro (for the unititiated its a sparkly metallic glass) but the love affair is officially over..... *you can picture here me stamping off in a huff!

I used the knobbly end of my vacstack pull to make a marble last night.... it was big and beautiful and a little bit swirly. It was one of those occasions where I couldn't wait to have a peek into the kiln this morning and because I was using my minor burner (read baby torch for boro working) it took me about an hour and a half to finish off I had visions of absolute beauty and was keen to get some job satisfaction from my glass baby........ NOPE, definitely not happening.

I know there are quite a few boro colours that do not like to be encased and will now add Unobtainium to my list (particularly in big lumps). My lovely mib had gone all "crackylicious" on me, but only where the stripes of unobtainium were, here's a pic so others can learn from my mistakes ;-)

As you can see my baby had a good and a bad photographic side. I had even popped in a little clownfish murrini at the end like a signature because this marble was the biggest I had made so far - nearly 2 inches in fact.

Lifes a learning curve I suppose - clear encased thick unobtainium.... EPIC FAIL!

**Note: if you shut your eyes and hold it in your hand..... still lovely!

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!!!!!!