[mikefrantz]

For those of you who use Lauscha clear, I have some questions. Our customer recieved some of of clear Lauscha about two months ago. The beads seemed to crack either in the kiln, upon removing them from the kiln or even days later. I suggested that they put the beads in hotter. They had also been told the same from another person, but they put them in really hot, but I do not think that doing so would cause a problem. Upon looking at the broken beads through a stressmeter, there is lots of stress. I had thought that if they had put the beads in too cool, there might be stress that would show up on a stress meter, but I thought that the stress would be gone if they had put the beads in hot. Since this has happen to two different beadmakers, it has me worried. This glass may be from our latest shipment, or it could be from one six months ago. I do not recall any problems with either shipment of clear Lauscha. I am having the customer send me a sample of both sizes of clear for me to test, and that also disturbs me since if it was only one size that was breaking, but it is two sizes. Do I have two different sizes that were bad that nobody else got? My customers did lose lots of hours and I have no idea what went wrong. If anyone can solve this problem, I would be forever thankfull.

Sincerely

Mike Frantz