Newbie’s Week of Lampwork – day 1

Sunday 21st

After all the setting up in my last post, I LIT MY TORCH! Then I went “Argh, I need some glass” so grabbed a couple of rods. And did some emergency foil wrapping of my fibre blanket. Yes, I should have done those things before, but I was busy nerving myself up to lighting it to see if it worked! At least I’d dipped my mandrels earlier…

Quick recap: I’m using a Hot Head torch with a bulk connection kit so that it can be run off a normal propane bottle. Otherwise you have to use the little canisters of Mapp gas that are very expensive and run out quickly. I didn’t bother even trying to use those.

In my first session, I made three little beads!

Newbie beads day 1

1. Light turquoise
2. Light turquoise with dark ivory dots
3. Petroleum green with transparent purple dots (look more transparent in person)

End shapes not wonderful, but I was having shaky hands from nerves/excitement for a while there! I was surprised by the lacy effect round the edge of the ivory, so asked on Frit-Happens if I’d been overheating it. Turns out, my stringer was dark ivory and that’s the effect you get with it (light ivory gives the smooth outlines that I was expecting). It looks a lot better than I think light ivory dots would, because I was still jittering and trying to find the right place in the flame, so the dots were a bit all over the place anyway!

I knew that dark ivory reacted more with silver, for example, but I didn’t know it did this! Rather cool.

I’m pleased I didn’t accidentally reduce my turquoise and get rusty spots all over it, too.

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Finally, here’s a quick pic of my workspace from an angle so you can see the space I have better:

Angleview of box