Here I am again with the results of some work to report. Unfortunately, I don’t have photos handy yet. I’m taking a fusing class out of town and killing time in hotel room tonight, so can add some more use notes here. I’ll add photos after this weekend when I’m back home.
I experimented with the CBS glow powder on some mushrooms and fairies I’m making. The glow powder HAS to be encased. But, is very difficult to encase because it doesn’t let the glass stick to it (kind of like putting irridized to irridized in fusing - they don’t fuse). Or in flameworking terms, like adding glass to a cold mandrel, it just doesn’t stick. That’s what the powder does. It sticks to the hot glass you rolled in it, but the next layer of glowing glass just rolls off the powder. The powder will burn off even easier than Dichro, so try not to put it in flame AT ALL until it’s covered.
The trick is to make a gather (in this case, Soft 104 Glass), roll it in the powder then encase it. To do that, you have to heat up a much larger gather and try to cover the glow powder AND hit the lower layer of glass at the base of the rolled gather, at the same time, to trap the powder. However, if you can achieve this and then pull out the gather to a thick stringer or rod to use, it holds it’s glow very well. I used it to add dots to mushrooms and for the fairies wings. It worked especially well for the wings. They glow in even the faintest of shadow and without necessarily being purposefully light charged.
I wish they’d make a video using this stuff in flameworking. The instructions are really more applicable to fusing even though CBS makes a point of saying it’s for Lampworking too. Well, more experiments to come. I’d LOVE to hear from anyone else who’s tired to use the CBS glow powder in a Lampworking project!
Good night and happy torching.
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