Help with color(s)

[Brontobrat]

Hello! I am not new to Lampworking but I am a total noob to boro. I need help! I ordered some sample color packs and I can’t seem to get the colors described out of them. Each rod came with a tag attached that describes how to work the glass to get specific effects. Ugh. I’m doing something wrong because a lot of them look exactly the same when I’m finished. Ones in particular that are marked amber purple.

I have been working in soft glass for a long time and the terms “striking” and “reducing” tell me to do different things with the glass to achieve the end goal of striking (usually bathe in a cooler flame) or reducing (put in gas rich flame at the end to fr the metals to come to the surface). Is this the same in boro? Am I supposed to strike the glass before I use it? Will it strike after being encased? I have so many questions…

Thanks for any help

[kevingreenbmx]

All the amber-purple family colors have essentially the same basic workflow required to get the nice colors out of them:

1) Get it super hot in an oxidizing flame to "reset" the color and make all the silver go into solution
2) Work it in an oxidizing flame to keep transparency and stay more amber/purple spectrum, work it reducing to make it go beige/tan/milky and to bring out greens and blues in some variants.
3) At the end, let it cool off to basically right at annealing temp, then bring it back up in temp using a reducing flame to strike the color. Play with different heats and times at temperature to see the range of colors you can get.
4) play with your kiln cycle to see what kiln strikes you can get from it, many colors like a short soak at 50-100f above annealing temp to initiate a strike, followed by an extra long annealing temp soak. Others require hours and hours at annealing temp, and some like repeated ramps up and down between annealing temp and strike temp.

this corning video is a pretty good demonstration of working with those colors:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsJjxlXiez8

[Brontobrat]

Originally Posted by kevingreenbmx

All the amber-purple family colors have essentially the same basic workflow required to get the nice colors out of them:

1) Get it super hot in an oxidizing flame to "reset" the color and make all the silver go into solution
2) Work it in an oxidizing flame to keep transparency and stay more amber/purple spectrum, work it reducing to make it go beige/tan/milky and to bring out greens and blues in some variants.
3) At the end, let it cool off to basically right at annealing temp, then bring it back up in temp using a reducing flame to strike the color. Play with different heats and times at temperature to see the range of colors you can get.
4) play with your kiln cycle to see what kiln strikes you can get from it, many colors like a short soak at 50-100f above annealing temp to initiate a strike, followed by an extra long annealing temp soak. Others require hours and hours at annealing temp, and some like repeated ramps up and down between annealing temp and strike temp.

this corning video is a pretty good demonstration of working with those colors:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsJjxlXiez8

Thank you for that link. It helped!