Effetre 441 Dark Matter

Well - this is an interesting one. Dark and mysterious - like Dark Matter. (Incidentally - if you want to know where all the missing dark matter in the universe is - check on the surface of my car - I'm pretty sure a significant portion is there. ;-) )

To start with - this was another rod that was too dark shocky to work - like the Spanish Leather. Fed up with that - I stuck the end in the kiln to pre-warm it while I made another bead. This was successful - but I hate doing that because it makes so much of the rod so hot that you can only hang onto the end, and if you forget and leave it too long - hoo boy! Inevitably - I wind up burning myself when I pre-warm the rods, and this was no exception.

Overall - it looks like a gunmetal colour - a purplish grey with some streaks of colour - if you look very closely. These colour streaks were more pronounced when it was hot. The one on the left in the first picture - I tried reducing it - no apparent change. The one on the right had a greenish area on it when it went into the kiln - as if it had partially struck. It does seem to have a slightly more purple area on one side.

Interesting glass - bears further experimenting, I think.