CIM Smurfy
 

So I've got myself a nice selection of Messy color and just love it.

But. The first rod of Smurfy pretty much popped into instant frit. I tried prewarming the end and that worked OK but only a little.

Anybody have any suggestions?

I always find smurfy to be shocky and I have to keep the rod in the kiln while I'm working with it. It is such a better dk turquoise than dark sky blue or dark turquoise IMO, but those were always a bit shocky too.

I haven't found that with Smurfy...yet. But Olive yes, almost every rod every time I order. Guess it just depends on which part of the pull we get. Some rods just won't work even prewarming, if they're one of the ones that violently break I've actually been saving them to send back to Mike! I mean, we wouldn't keep anything else we bought that is unusable right? I have the biggest scar on my chest from a large piece of olive that burnt me so bad, that's when I decided enough. When they break every 1/4 inch or so prewarming won't help.

I agree that they are better than italian turquoises

I had the same experience with Autumn. Frit on a stick. Down my shirt, arm face. Yuk

It's really getting annoying that CIM glass is so shocky, I paid a fair amount of money for some Autumn and Ginger and I could barely put the glass in the flame.

And not just those colours, a ton others just blow up on me all the time, they need to fix their product or make it cheaper at least if the batches are not right, surely they test them?

that's true, I have come to expect some shockiness from all the newer CIMs. Might be a small price to pay for fantastic colors, but how do the other manufacturers avoid it?

It's the way the glass is pulled into rods, not sure why they can't be consistent...

Interesting. I tried some when they had a 96 Coe line and loved it.

I still really like the color palette but it's really hard to find any conversations or reviews that mention this issue at all. So I'm now very glad I got minimum quantities of all of it.

I'll start another general thread about CIM and shockiness.

How do u warm the glass rods? Be for using them?

put them in the kiln or on top of the kiln, or on a prewarming plate or hot hair curler machine, etc. Something to heat up those ends before you put them in the flame so they won't shatter from shockiness.