Silver Foil and Wire Lentil Tutorial

[MaryBeth]

Hi Marie,
What is do is make the base bead, then roll it over the foil. Burnish the foil in well. Roll the bead in frit. Wrap with silver wire if desired. Case the bead in clear (or the transparent of your choice).

I only use one layer of foil on these and it goes on the bead prior to applying the frit.

Hope this helps!

[J. Savina]

The way I do this is by using 2 pieces of foil. One to cover the base and one to lay over the frit that I spread on a marver plate. When you gently heat the bead after applying the first piece of foil (burnished), then you'll pick up the foil and frit on the marver by rolling both at the same time. Gently heat again, as Mary Beth said and pick up more frit.
I'm so inspired to make these beads again after seeing Mary Beths pictures of her beautiful works of art.
J.

Originally Posted by Marie C

J, would you please give a little more instruction on what you said, about after you burnish the silver you put another piece of foil over some frit that you spread on a marver? I don't understand. You do the initial foil, then burnish, then more foil, then frit?

Thanks! Marie

[wendbill]

Any advice on the cracking?

[Mustang Dawn]

Originally Posted by wendbill

Any advice on the cracking?

What size frit are you using and how much are you applying to your bead base. Too much frit will crack a bead.

Dawn

[HONEYBUNNY72_99]

What gauge wire do you use?Is it Sterling or Fine silver?How do you remove the firescale after they are done?
Sorry for all the questions LOL!I am kinda new at this
Tina

[MaryBeth]

I use 28 gauge .999 fine silver wire. There is no firescale when you use fine silver.

As far as to the cracking - check your annealing schedule. I had to work with this process for a while to eliminate all cracking. Make sure the bead goes into the kiln glowing. Hold for at least an hour at 960 (I use 970). My ramp down is very slow - 60 degrees per hour until I get to 700 degrees. All of these things will help to insure that your bead will not crack. Also, remember that colors that do like like to be cased will not do well as base beads with this technique either (warm colors like red, orange, yellow and coral).

[wendbill]

I was using a variety of transparent blues and moretti clear. I didn't actually use frit since I didn't have any in the shades I wanted for the beads. I used 104 COE only. I also batch annealed them about a couple of hours after I made them. The four that cracked, cracked about 24 hours after I annealed them. No sign of cracking in the other 12 though. Now it's 3 or 4 days later.

I'm beginning to wonder if one of the glasses I used (since I used 4 or 5) in the four that cracked was incompatible. One particular shade I used, I was using stubs from about 3 different suppliers.

[MaryBeth]

Originally Posted by wendbill

I also batch annealed them about a couple of hours after I made them. The four that cracked, cracked about 24 hours after I annealed them.

Here's your problem. Beads with silver really need to be put directly into the kiln. They cooled down too fast initially and probably developed stress cracks prior to being annealed.

[Mustang Dawn]

Yep, you have several factors going on causing your beads to crack. The silver and the batch annealing. Pressed beads like to go directly into the kiln.

[wendbill]

OK. Well I'll try again once I buy some more fine silver wire.

I've been admiring Mary Beth's beads since I first saw them.

[Dragonfly Queen]

Very pretty Mary Beth. thank you for sharing. Just one more thing to practice on.

[Lizzydee]

thanks so much for sharing!

[Lyssa]

I'm going to try this today and will report back with pictures.

[MaryBeth]

Everyone is welcome and thanks for the compliments.

I'd love to see them, Lyssa!

[Lyssa]

Two beads are in the kiln right now. I need new glasses so it only takes two beads to tire my eyes out to the point where I need to stop.

I forgot to put the wire on in the first bead so I made both without the wire. Also, my encasing was a lot thicker than it should have been so I overshot my lentil press size by quite a bit. I just made two square tab-type shapes. I need to get more lentil press sizes. :^)

I don't have any commercial clear stringer so I just pulled my own from the one sample rod of the new Uroborus clear I got. (It's REALLY nice, NO bubbly scum, but I could tell I need to clean the glass better before I start.) I was trying really hard to pull thick stringer so I ended up pulling 2.5 and 3 mm stringer. I've never been able to do that, I must have REALLY wanted it today. Or maybe it is a property of the Uro clear.

It was relatively easy to keep the silver foil from melting in. I'm used to working with silver leaf, so the foil felt like it was just NEVER going to melt. It was hard to encase evenly, and since I pressed a square tab, I ended up with uneven amounts of glass on either side of the mandrel. Encasing is something I want to practice more of, but it just takes SO MUCH GLASS, and mistakes look SO BAD that they aren't even good to use as gifts, like I did with a lot of the non-encased slightly wonky beads I get when I'm practicing other types of new techniques or even when I first started lampworking 8 years ago. Since I need new glasses my eyesight is blurry up close, and that makes it hard to see how I'm laying down my encasing, and I have to fill holes in the encasing to prevent bleed-out. That's why I ended up with uneven encasing. Not a technique problem, just a vision problem.

Today I figured out that I can use the lids of the little jars I keep my frit in to hold the frit to dip the bead. It worked relatively well. Better than what I WAS using, a tiny kitchen scoop. To store my frit, I use those little sample-sized glass honey jars you get in nicer restaurants and they have metal lids, so it works well to hold the frit. Just have to fill the lid high enough so the small bead reaches the frit before you bump the mandrel on the edge of the lid.

I used gaffer glass which is not coe 104, and I dipped the frit three times before I had the amount I wanted. Hopefully the incompatibility doesn't cause problems.

I used a year-old batch of Effetre Dark Ivory as my base. It's not very curdly, but I figure that's not what the goal is. Mary Beth, can you please explain why you use ivory? Does it react with the silver or something? I keep hearing about silver and silver glass and ivory and reactive glasses but it's so hard to keep it all straight and remember what reacts with what in ways that one wants and in ways that one doesn't want. Any clues from you would be great.

Thanks for doing this tut, it's really making me think about what I'm doing and how the glasses are all working together.

[AmorphousDesigns]

Aimee, I can't wait to see your beads. Thank you for sharing your experience making these.

[MaryBeth]

I just saw that I did say to use ivory in the first post! It will work because the silver foil acts as a buffer but for most of those examples I used clear or a light transparent as my base. I'll go back and edit that.

I do have another style of bead that I use ivory for the base, silver foil, then partially wrap with a clear transparent. The effect is really pretty and it looks like you used silvered ivory without the bother of making the stringer. Let me see if I can dig up a couple of pics of those.

The beads in the first picture (the blue and violet) were done on an ivory base. I'm guessing I used ivory because it does hold the heat well, which allows you to burnish the silver in well. It also requires very little additional heat (just shoot some up the mandrels into the bead) to get the frit to stick without burning off the silver.

The green and blue beads in the second picture started out the same way as the frit beads but I just used stripes of the colored glass over the silvered ivory. Where it wasn't covered with the color you can see silvered ivory stripes. This is true also for the all blue beads and the amber colored beads.

The last photo is of frit beads using Val Cox Mood Swings frit. That one started with a clear base, then silver, then the frit, then it was encased, then I added a strip of silver which I encased again.

So - it can be done with either the ivory base or a transparent base. I've tried this technique with a black base wrapped in silver, then striped in back, then encased - but I had cracking issues with that combination. I need to try those again and see if I can work those out.

[helensharvest]

Beautiful, thanks, Mary Beth!

[Lyssa]

Okiedokie, here are the beads I made using the technique. I used Gaffer Glass frit, Abergine, Cerulean Blue x2, and Ruby Gold.

[MaryBeth]

Those are gorgeous, Lyssa! Don't you just love the way that the ruby gold looks like fire over silver. The blues are wonderful also.

[Lyssa]

I'm disappointed the ruby gold looks so brown/livery. Is that just how ruby gold looks over silver or did I overcook it? I love the cerulean though :^)

[MaryBeth]

Originally Posted by Lyssa

I'm disappointed the ruby gold looks so brown/livery. Is that just how ruby gold looks over silver or did I overcook it? I love the cerulean though :^)

It's not that way everywhere! I'd say if you work it a little cooler you will be able to eliminate most of the brown spots. They are still very nice beads.

[Blooming22]

Thanks for that Mary Beth, I'm new here and just this tutorial has taught me a lot. Cant wait to try. Thanks