Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Double Helix: Thallo

 Thallo - a reducing colour from Double Helix.

The official blurb is:

Thallo is an emerald green super luster.  Repeated brief reductions create a palette of exterior lusters;  silvers, golds, blues, greens and purples.  It was developed from the popular test batches OX-459 and TO-578.


So let's see what we get.


This is a self-coloured spacer - not reduced. It's a pretty shade of green.


 And this one is reduced. Kinda murky and muddy. Reduced while still too hot.


I did a base of clear for this, and encased with Thallo, let it cool - no glow in it at all (check while holding the bead under the table - darker - easier to see that the glow has gone out of it.). Reduced.

You can see the reduction - but it's not very dramatic. It shows better at an angle.  


Tried again - again, a base of clear - although one of the ends of clear I grabbed might have been Aion, as I had some odd striking going on.

Reduced it, again cool, but for a bit longer.  I could see greens and purples when I put it in the kiln, but it came out much less impressive. The black lines are intense black - well - that questionable intense black that I mentioned earlier.
 Backlit.
 And at an angle, you can see the reduction.

This was a base of CiM Lichen,  Thallo in the centre, black lines on the left, reduced on the left side only. I like the blue that the black went from the fuming. This was much more impressive when it went into the kiln. It's kind of meh now.
 Day 2 of testing - now that I've seen what I got above - I'm going to try reducing multiple times.

And this is better. This is a base of clear, encased with Thallo, cool to no glow, reduce, cool, reduce, cool, reduce. Much more dramatic effect.
 On the angle - you can really see it.
 Backlit - you just see the glass and none of the lustre.

And finally - a set of spacers - all cooled to the "omigawd they are going to crack" stage, and reduced twice or more, high up in the flame - way out at the tip. 

I think this shape lends itself better to viewing the effect. The larger, flattish surface of the lentils requires that you view it on an angle to see the best effect, and because of the curve of the surface of these, you see the effect more readily and without having to hold the bead at a specific angle.

So - reduce cool, reduce multiple times, and go with tightly curved surfaces.

1 comment:

  1. Awesome, thanks so much for sharing. I finally got up the courage to try this glass again yesterday, and in the end, only got the "meh" factor. :-( I'll try again today after reading your blog! ;-)

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