[periwinkle]

Well, this is pretty exciting and promising as well. I received a good size hunk of red goldstone in the mail from Valjean. It was very generous of you to send that, Val! So of course, I tried to break it into smaller chunks almost as soon as I got it out of the package.

First, I put a piece of graphite on my single burner element and tried heating it up that way for about 15 minutes. The piece was about 3"x2" and there was a smaller chunk as well. I plunged those into water, but only a little sliver broke off of the smaller chunk.

So then I decided to try both pieces in the kiln. I have it set to 985 while I make beads. I put the pieces in for about 20-30 minutes. I plunged the pieces into the water and at once they both sizzled like before, and I thought they were just gonna sit there whole - laughing at me - but I conked them with the tongs and they started to break into pieces. I kept conking away and I got many good sized pieces for encasing. I have one piece that is about 1" big - a little too big for my comfort to encase, but all the rest are smaller.

There is a lot of sparkle in these pieces, so I'm thinking these are going to make very nice stringers! Can't wait to encase them in different colors!