Intense Black

[LadyCrow]

How can you tell Intense Black,from transparent black? I bought some stringers in Intense black but they act like the other balck.Am I missing something,I can't get it to look as whispy as the beads I've seen it on.This is the first time I bought any, and I'm disapointed.I even tryed to pull it thinner with no such luck.Also,when I hold it up to the light it looks purpleish.

[kimberly]

How can you tell Intense Black,from transparent black? I bought some stringers in Intense black but they act like the other balck.Am I missing something,I can't get it to look as whispy as the beads I've seen it on.This is the first time I bought any, and I'm disapointed.I even tryed to pull it thinner with no such luck.Also,when I hold it up to the light it looks purpleish.


If it looks purple when pulled very thin and held to the light, it is probably not Intense Black. It could be regular Black stringer. If it is, contact the vendor and they should be willing to exchange it for you.

[villa design]

Also I think the whispy-ness (is that a word? LOL) comes from reaction to other colors like Ivory. I'm not sure if it works with others.

[kimberly]

Also I think the whispy-ness (is that a word? LOL) comes from reaction to other colors like Ivory. I'm not sure if it works with others.


Very true. Try superheating a THIN stinger on some light ivory. If it doesn't web out, then it is probably not Intense Black.

[LadyCrow]

The first color I tryed it on was dark Ivory and no webing at all so then I pulled it thinner and still no webbing.Tryed next in dark turqoise,still no webbing. I'm on a HH,does that matter?

[kimberly]

It might matter. You do need to get the Intense Black REALLY hot in order for it to web out. Also, don't use a thick stringer. The stringer I use that works the best for me is about the diameter of a hair. Thin works much better!

[Chuckie]

The first color I tryed it on was dark Ivory and no webing at all so then I pulled it thinner and still no webbing.Tryed next in dark turqoise,still no webbing. I'm on a HH,does that matter?
If you didn't get any webbing, but got a hazy purple edging around the black, it's probably regular black. It's pretty easy to get regular black to bleed into the base color. Try it on white glass, too to see if you get the purpley hazy bleeding.

If the color didn't bleed out into the Ivory and the color line remained well defined, you might have Intense black, but didn't get it hot enough to web.

[Beast Master]

If it looks purple-ish when you hold it up to the light, you DEFINITELY got regular black and not intense. You should be able to pull super-thin stringers from intense black stringer and they should STILL look black.

Stop wasting your ivorya nd turqoise on tests and contact the supplier!


Wes.

[LadyCrow]

Thanks a bunch,I thought there was something wrong,but being so new I figured I was the wrong one as usual....lol

[silkys]

Margie .. Im also on a HH ... they are right you have to get it super hot .
melt it in then bring it very close to the head of your torch and slightly to the bottom ( you will hear a kinda sizzle ) if its intense black it will start to web .

[Emily]

You should be able to pull super-thin stringers from intense black stringer and they should STILL look black.

Or put dots of intense black on transparent blue eyeballs, melt them down, and not have purple pupils (say that three times fast).

I'm not sure that the webbing is a reaction, though. I'm pretty sure that intense black webs on white if you use a hair thin stringer and heat the snot out of it, and I doubt that white has anything reactive in it. Haven't tried it for ages, though, so you could just add this to the list of things I'm wrong about. (Come to think of it, there ARE some colors that intense black won't web on, but I never did enough playing with the technique to figure out what the common factor was. I remember having trouble with transparent greens and a transparent gray, but I've got good web beads in periwinkle, in white, and in opaque red.)

If you want to try the webbing, make a cylinder-shaped bead. Heat a little blob on the end of your intense black stringer, then heat a little spot on your mandrel to the left of your bead. Touch your blob to this spot so it attaches, then spin your mandrel and move the stringer from left to right down the bead so that the thread of glass wraps itself around the bead. You can go back the other direction if you want, but don't do it too much. You don't want too much intense black in one spot or you'll get blobs and they won't web. The reason for starting the thread on the mandrel is so you don't get a blob where you start it on the bead. Move the bead far out in the flame to melt the thread in slowly. You don't want to melt it too fast, because it might ball up, giving you blobs. (And you hate blobs.) Once it's melted in, heat the snot out of it. If what you have is really ordinary black, you'll just get purple smears.

Jim Smircich used to have a tutorial on using intense black on his website. He called it "black lace" because he had already used "black web" for the effect he got from heating the snot out of opalino. Not sure if the black lace tutorial is still there, but you can check out smircich.com to see.

[Chuckie]

I doubt that white has anything reactive in it
No, not reactive, it's just softer than the black. It makes it easy for the black to bleed into the white if you overheat it. Because it's white, it's really easy to see the purple halo caused by the bleeding of the black into the base bead. It's not a reaction just the two colors blending together.

[Emily]

No, not reactive, it's just softer than the black. It makes it easy for the black to bleed into the white if you overheat it. Because it's white, it's really easy to see the purple halo caused by the bleeding of the black into the base bead. It's not a reaction just the two colors blending together.

No, I'm not talking about the purple that you get with regular Effetre black. I'm talking about the webbing from intense black on white. I've gotten the webbing from intense black on some ordinary non-reactive colors (white and periwinkle, and red, which you might call a reactive color, I guess) and had trouble with it on some that I wouldn't have expected to cause trouble, since it performed on the others (transparent greens, transparent gray). It wasn't like I did a huge amount of experimenting with the troublesome colors, so it's possible that there was something I was doing differently that I didn't realize. It was quite a while ago, but I'm sure of the colors that it succeeded on, because I still have the beads (lying in open boxes on my dining room table, as a matter of fact, waiting for me to decide what to do with them).

[evilglass]

Intense black webs on most (if not all) opaque colors, and not on transparents. That's my clue :)

[Firelilly]

Also, don't use a thick stringer. The stringer I use that works the best for me is about the diameter of a hair. Thin works much better!
Good to know! Thanks!

Lil