Garaging temps?

[pierces*designs]

I am playing with encasing most of my encased beads come out with cracks from being too cool I assume.

Typically I garage at about 800 in my AIM bead annealer (with the fabric covering over where the beads go) then bump up to 968 to anneal for 40 minutes then ramp down.

My encased beads (Uroboros 96) are cracking (in half). Am I garaging too low with a fabric door?

Thoughts?

[Roseanne]

I was always under the impression that you should "garage" them at 960 give or take a few degrees. So, I have always put them in my kiln at that temp. I do not have a AIM kiln, mines a Arrowsprings kiln, but I believe they are similar. Why not just program it for 960/968 as the garage temp and see how it goes? Hope you get more replies:)

[Aleigh]

I have a HotGlass Kiln with the fabric door from Sundance. I have always 'garaged' my beads between 960 and 968. Let them soak for as long as I need depending on the size of the last bead going in and then begin the ramp down. I have almost no cracking to speak of in the three years with this kiln set-up.

Hope this helps!

Amy
Website: www.aleighdesigns.com

[pierces*designs]

I used to garage at 960 but then someone advised that I do it the way I am now. (there was reasoning behind it, but I won't get into that)

Well, easy enough to fix then! YAY!!

[dogmaw]

I usually garage at 40 degrees below annealing temp. Well, except with Satake where I use 50 degrees because it is sooooo much softer.

[GinnyHampton]

I garage mine at around 960 - 970 as well.

[e. mort]

Yep, I garage Bullseye and Moretti at 955 which is also good for annealing both. Since the strain point for Moretti and Bullseye is around 850-860 degrees I think you are probably losing them to thermal shock.

Eric

[DesertDreamer]

800 is well BELOW the strain point!

I garage everything at 1050, when I'm done I drop it to 850, soak for 1 hour, then over 4 hours to 400 and shut down. (That's with a firebrick kiln.) The only beads I've lost over the past several years had incompatibility cracks...one episode with what I finally figured out was mislabelled glass (Bullseye labelled as Uroboros) and a bad batch of Lauscha a few weeks ago.