Wednesday, September 12, 2012

My Clear Glass Experiment

I have long loved the triangle bead – oh such a marvelous thing and then if you encase those lovely triangles – Just Wow! Is all I can say. 
 
I have long been frustrated by the 104 clear glass available.  I may fuss endlessly with a bead, but really -  I don’t want to fuss with glass.  I want it to go on smooth, I don’t want to clean or wash or pickle – and goodness knows I am not into that whole peeling – that is just not happening.
 
So, here is my experiment:
 
I vigorously rubbed the glass in the tail of my work shirt – that is all the cleaning any of them received.  I did peel off just the tip of each rod – it does get a bit scummy where it has been cut – but that was it!
 
I used basic colours – nothing fancy black, white, grey and turquoise. 
 
Each bead was made in the same fashion – the Zephyr one does have a little bit less clear than the rest of them. 
 
V.S. 04 Clear glass is from Italy – I got mine at Nortel, but I see that Frantz has it too.
Very clear and easy to work with.  The bead has a few micro bubbles. 
 
Tag – easy to work with and also very clear.  A few micro bubbles and a tiny bit of scum that you have to look really, really hard for. 
 
Effetre 004 – Easy to work with and also quite clear – some micro bubbles and also a tiny bit of scumming – but again, you really have to look for it. 
 
Effetre 006 – Easy to work with and quite clear – has micro bubbles and a bit of scumming – you don’t have to look too hard to see it. 
 
Double H – Zephyr – it is a joy to work with and very clear – it too has a small number of micro bubbles.  I cannot find any scum.
 
CIM – There is a crispness to this glass that I really like – but oh my the bubbles – the rod had one of those rivers of bubbles running the entire length of the glass.  Some of them popped along the way but you can see them.  Also this glass broke when I was in the middle of using it and then was really shocky for an inch or so.  It does actually seem to sharpen the encased triangles – I must note that there were two types of CIM packaging available – this one is the older stuff – you can tell that the tissue if a bit yellower – I recently made a bunch of beads very similar to these beads using a newer package of CIM and had some scumming, but no large bubbles and no shockiness either. 
 
These beads can be found residing with Jean at Nortel (just give me a couple of weeks to get out there and drop them off!)  Feel free to visit anytime and inspect them at your leisure.  
 


 
 

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