Blowing R-106 Iris Dark brown and not losing color?

[cornelia]

I absolutely love to work with Reichenbach Iris Dark brown (COE 96) at the torch, all the colors, including the white/blue devitrication.

Now I just started learning (hopefully at some point) glass blowing and am trying to get R-106 to work for me. So far I'm only getting white/pale yellow.


These are the colors I'd like to get (torched beads):

149511 149512
149513 149514



And this is all I can get blowing so far - all the white/pale yellow is R-106:

149507
(I know, wobbly and all, "banana vase", a newbie piece... but just to show you the color issues I'm talking about. :-))


I tried to research this but no luck, sorry if this is a dumb question, but I'm stuck after many tries. I tried the color on the surface and also encased (I'm working with frits & shards), no change - still just white/pale yellow.

We tried changing the glory hole flame settings but still no luck. I'm aware of that it might be hard to get the full color range without a torch cause I can't do spot treatment in the glory hole really. But for now I'd be more than happy to get at least some brown tones instead of the all white/pale yellow.

Any clues/tips/ideas??

If I'm totally in the wrong place here, my apologies and please don't get mad, any pointers to where else to go are more than appreciated.

Thank you very much in advance!

[squid]

I love that glass - it is one of my favorites! My experience has been that the pale yellow and white is usually from not letting it cool quite enough, so perhaps cool it off more?

[ewdb]

i get colour from it by re-striking - let the bead cool down and then touch it with a brass/stainless tool to get the gold, then dark brown, purple, etc... and i sometimes run it thru a final reducing flame to give it a nice golden shimmer. if i overheat the bead it goes back to gold and i have to start again

can you do any of that with a blown piece?

[Elizabeth Beads]

You are using the furnace rods, not the lampworking cane, right? That would make a difference.

[FlameFilly]

The color just may be blown out too thin to get the effect that you get on the torch. On the torch your laying down strait color with no thinning.

I used colors like that when I was blowing glass on small perfume bottles. Used about a 1/4 -1/2 inch chunk picked up right on the pipe then a deep encasement. I would twist up and manipulate the glass and only put a small bubble in it. I got really nice effects with any of the iris colors or gold browns.

Might want to try and reduce it and see what happens also if its on the surface.

Good Luck!

[Mr. Smiley]

It's got a lot to do with flame atmosphere, heating and cooling. I think you can get it to do similar things on off hand work, but you'll probably need a torch on your bench to hit it with FIRE. ;)

[cornelia]

Thank you all for your suggestions! I'm using frit (size 3) and shards blown from lampworking cane. I'll try applying the color thicker and more reduction. The torch they have around there isn't doing much really so as much I'd love to give this a try this won't be an option right now. Thanks again!