Boro....

[Curly Irish Girl]

how do you tell striking from non striking colors???? Is it a matter of looking up each one on the vendor's website and searching the details?

Does it "hurt" to run a striking cycle if you have a mix of strike & no-strike boro in the annealer????

[dogmaw]

I got a poster from each of the vendors. They show the striked (sp?) color, and then I tape a little piece of the rod to the poster so I have the unstruck color too.

[Cosmo]

Basically you need to know the colors and how they work. Certain types of colors are usually striking colors, and certain types don't strike. Colors with lots of silver usually need to be struck. Colors made with cadmium (like crayon colors) are not striking colors. Same with cobalts, blacks, etc. In fact, there are many more non-striking colors than there are striking colors. It's just that the striking colors create the most dramatic results, so they are the ones you hear most about.

It won't hurt to run most regular colors through a striking cycle in your kiln, but it does darken some colors. I would take all the boro colors you have and cut a 1" piece off each rod, then put those small pieces into the kiln. Run them through an annealing cycle, and compare the results to the un-annealed rods.

[LAG]

Chad is right and I like the idea of cutting a piece of rod.. Something to keep in mind is some colors will strike even more if you leave it in the kiln longer ..ie: Remschneider leaves some in for 4 hours at 1200 or so. Some colors only need to be annealed a regular amount of time to strike. Each one is different. Boro can be challenging for these reasons and the flame type that it needs to be worked with.

I took Henry Grimmetts class on working boro colors and it can be overwhelming. I found that I ended up with some real surprises sometimes that were gorgeous.....