Burnt Transparent Glass
Now that I found the sweet spot using the newest formulation of Map gas, I have another challenge: I keep burning some of my palest transparents. I consistently burn pale lavender - either on the Hothead or on the Minor Burner. This one seems to be an equal opportunity glass. I seem to be able to cover dots without burning it, but anything more than a dot and it's kaput! I'm so sad about this color because I love it so much.
On the minor burner, I get bubbles and even my instructor got a line of what looks like scum or burning with the lavender. At home on the HH, my lovely pale lavender turns into a nasty smoky amethyst color, except with smoke swirls in it. So, the lavender is really giving me fits. What can I do to keep its lovely color? I'm fairly certain people will tell me to work further out in the flame, but I just found the sweet spot and further out in the flame is where all my glass was going sooty.
My other problem is with the aquas - pale and medium. The aquas are really touchy.
Yesterday I made a bead with a sage or medium green transparent base, then white dots and over those white dots, med. emerald, then more white dots and med. aqua on top of them.
Now the aqua was mostly fine up to this point (a few bubbles, but not too many). I put more white dots on top of this aqua to add my next color - dark transparent blue (mosaic blue, I think - it wasn't labeled). Then my torch went out. In the meantime, I went inside to grab another color to put on top of the last white dots.
After heating this in, I discovered my lovely aqua had gone all scorchy. Yes, I just made up that word, but it describes how awful it looked! It was all bubbly and the bead would've been wonderful except for all those awful bubbles.
I'm guessing I should work further out in the flame. I'd already turned the torch down so low that it went out just before I added the mosaic blue. Does the aqua need to be worked further out on the HH? That's the only thing I can think of, but I didn't want to do it because my glass got so sooty before when I working 6-8 inches out from the torch tip.
What can I do to prevent the scorching?
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