I’ve played with fire before when I did silver smithing for an entire year back in 2006 so I was not scared of working with flame. What I was concerned about was molten dripping glass. Was I going to be able to prevent it from dripping off the rod and onto the table? I knew that glass can shatter when cools to fast so I was also concerned with that as in is it an internal shatter or an explosion of glass shards. My doubts were quickly laid to rest after a couple of hours of one on one tutorial with a lovely lady by the name of Joy.
My first fear was quickly overcome when I slowly put the first glass rod into the flame and gently rolled the rod. It’s similar to twirling honey on one of those honey sticks but a lot thicker. A gentle twirl and it stays on. It wasn’t until maybe my 5th bead that my second concerned was laid to rest when I unintentionally left a bead out of the flame for too long when “crack”.
These are the beads that survived.
Now I want to get my lampworking kit together including a kiln for not only this but for other jewellery making techniques like Precious Metal Clay and Glass Slumping.
Till next time
Jenni
