Beads and Baubles

Frit Fantasies

The secret to these fabulous beads is twofold: First, you need frit. Second, you need silver leaf or silver foil.

These beads are made with "House of Blues" frit from Val Cox. Val changes frits regularly on her site, and as of this writing, the House of Blues mix was not available, but keep checking if you like it...it may return!

Frit, quite simply, is ground up glass. You'll see things marked as "reduction" frits, which means that they change color when put into a propane-rich ("reducing") flame. Reduction frits are always 96 COE. You can use a small amount of 96COE glass on the outside of Moretti/Effetre (104 COE) or Bullseye (90 COE) glass, but you should never encase it unless you are using 96 COE glass. There are comparatively few colors of 96 COE rods and stringers, but if you can get used to using fusing glass and cutting it into strips to use for lampwork, you'll have a pretty much endless palette.

To start, lay out a small pile of frit on a marver surface, and put a a small strip of silver foil to the side where you can access it easily. (If your frit is ground small or powdery, be sure to wear a dust mask when you're using it--enamels and powdery frits will get into your lungs.)

To make these beads, make a small barrel of transparent violet glass, then heat it and roll it in the frit. Melt the frit in and roll the bead on a marver again into a smooth barrel.

Place the foil strip on the marver, heat the bead, and roll it up in the foil. (Whenever you use silver foil in beads, you must be sure that you have ample and not just adequate ventilation, since the fumes from the silver are even more toxic than those from the glass alone!) Heat the bead again until the silver balls up.

Keep the bead warm, but let it cool down slightly so that you aren't going to smear the underlying glass, then encase it. These particular beads are encased in a color called "neon orchid", which is a color-change glass. It looks light purple in some lights, light blue in others.

Pop it in your kiln, and make some more!

Here's the really cool thing about adding silver to glass:

Glass colors are not created with dye. They're created, in many cases, by adding various minerals to the silica. Thus you get colors like "Rubino Oro" (fuchsia pink) by adding gold. Silver, naturally, changes this composition somewhat. When you coat Rubino Oro with silver, it turns to a very gold color, which I can only assume is because the silver draws the gold out of the glass. If you look at the picture of these blue beads closely, you'll see that each little silver dot is surrounded by a ring of gold. I assume this ring is from the purple base and the purple casing since both of those must also have some amount of gold. True blue glasses don't get this effect, as you can see here:

And the neat thing about frit is that you get a different reaction between the silver and each color of frit you use, so you can get really wild variations. Experiment!

Fanning the Flames

Periodically on various forums I belong to, the topic of heat comes up. Metals and glass both use heat and/or fire for a variety of things and people often want to know the details of working with flame. So if you're considering torches, kilns and the like, here's some information for you.

General Information on the Use of Heat
You'll hear the term "annealing" used in both metalsmithing and glass work. It means two very different things in practice, while the actual meaning of the word remains the same. In either case, annealing means reducing stress in the material by applying specific temperatures to reduce brittleness.

In practice, annealing makes metal sheet or wire soft, while it makes glass durable. To harden metal, you "work harden" it, subjecting it to hammering, twisting, tumbling. If it becomes too hard, it becomes brittle and can break, so you want to anneal it.

Glass annealing is a little different. You know how when you put ice cubes into a glass of room temperature water, the first thing that happens is that the ice fractures? Well, that's because the ice didn't freeze at the same time throughout, so tiny "stress fractures" were created. Glass is a supercooled liquid. If it doesn't stay at the same temperature the whole time it is cooling (that is, if the outside of a bead cools faster than the inside), it will eventually fracture, just like the ice cubes. Small beads can be cooled in a fiber blanket or vermiculite, but if you're going to sell your beads, you will need to cool them in a kiln, which will only let them cool extremely slowly so that the whole bead stays approximately equal in temp during the cooling process.

Using a Torch with Metal
Metal requires a hand-held torch. The metal sits on a fireproof surface while the torch is aimed at it. Some metal soldering can be done with a butane torch, like you use in your kitchen, but that doesn't get hot enough to do larger pieces. Soldering/brazing/fusing torches can use propane and oxygen, acetlyline and oxygen, or natural gas and oxygen.

You have to consistently move the torch while soldering, which is why you need to use a hand-held torch rather than a mounted one.

Using a Torch with Glass
Glass is generally fused in a kiln, not at a torch. In a kiln, layers of glass are heated up until they fuse together. They have to be heated slowly so that the glass doesn't shatter, held at the appropriate fusing temperature, then cooled slowly (annealed) so that the stresses are removed.

Lampwork, which is done at a torch, is done with a torch that is stable, sitting on a surface, while the glass is held in your hands (unlike metal).

There are two types of lampwork glass. "Soft" is also known as soda-lime glass, made by Moretti (Effetre), Bullseye, and some other companies. Each manufacturer manufactures glass of a specific Coefficient of Expansion (COE). Glass can ONLY be used with other glass of the same COE. So you cannot mix, for example, Moretti 104 COE with Bullseye 90, no matter how good the colors would look together. (The COE is how much the glass will expand/contract as it is heated/cooled--so while glass of different COEs will melt together, it will crack and separate as it cools.)

Soft glass can be worked with a "hothead" torch, which is small and uses a single cannister of MAPP gas, but most people use an Oxygen-Propane system like the Minor torch.

Hard glass, also known as Pyrex, is what "Borosilicate" or "Boro" glass is. It's called Hard because of the heat needed to melt it (which is why Pyrex is used in cooking--you'd never put regular glass in your oven at 400 degrees). You need a bigger torch to melt Pyrex -- for example, a Major burner. That is also a propane-oxygen system, but the torch is designed differently, so the flame gets much hotter.

For either type of glass, in addition to a torch you need a kiln to anneal your beady treasures. For either type of glass, you also need good ventilation -- the fumes glass releases as you heat it are poisonous. For either type of glass you need protective eyewear because looking at the flare of glass as it melts will destroy your vision.

A few good books on heat and jewelrymaking:

Passing the Flame -- expensive, but worth every penny. Buy this one and you won't need another on beadmaking.

Introduction to Glass Fusing: 15 Complete Project Lessons & Ideas for Dozens of Additional Fused Pieces -- good guide to fusing glass

Jewelry: Fundamentals of Metalsmithing -- an excellent book on metalsmithing for the jewelry maker