2nd chance?

[botree]

I have a bead I "finished" and put it in a fiber bkanket. After leaving it there for 2 days I removed it and immediatley saw a couple of places that needed a touch up. Question is. is it feasible to reheat and work some more on the bead. In other word once it has cooled is it considered a finished bead?

[ElizabethCreations]

ohhhhh! Last time (and first time) I did that, the bead explode all over the place... even if I slowly entered the bead in the flame.
Maybe that's possible but I did'nt have any success

[e. mort]

OK, I am assuming that it is still on the mandrell. Yeah, you can do this, but you need to bring the bead up very slowly in your kiln to annealing temperature. Then bring the bead into the back burner of your flame and very slowly heat it up. I have only done this once, since it turned out to be less hassel to just re-make the bead. I actually did it to heal a crack, and it healed up just fine with the exception that you can see a very very faint line where the crack used to be. Brian Kirkvliet told me that the line was probably caused by my having handled the bead and having gotten some of my skin oil into the crack. ps - Just remember to keep the handle part of your mandrel out of the kiln.

Good luck!

[luke gardner]

If you don't have a kiln, you can use a toaster oven to bring it up to 500 or so before you try to reintroduce it into the back fire.

[Cosmo]

I regularly reheat and rework marbles in both hard and soft glass. Just heat them up s-l-o-w-l-y .

[Zooziis]

I reheat large beads (1 1/2" long and 1/2" thick) for some of the paint techniques I use. I simply put them in a cold kiln, raise temp in kiln to 1100 degrees over 1/2 hour - 45 min or so, and then I take the bead immediately from the kiln to the flame, no fanning or slow introduction, or else you loose the heat it had from the kiln. I go fast and put it in the middle of the flame. I heat it in the flame consistantly before I begin working on it. Never had a crack or an explosion with that technique...however the beads I do this with were properly annealed once already, so they are more stable then a bead in the blanket. I think the key is getting them good an hot, which 1100 degrees is. I'd say, worst case you lose the bead completely, and you need to make a new one...if you don't like the one you have, then it's worth the risk of losing it. Furthermore, you will have more experience when you are done with a helpful technique of reentry and the more experience you have the better...good luck, if you haven't already done it...

[Steph'sBeadCorner]

I reheat large beads (1 1/2" long and 1/2" thick) for some of the paint techniques I use. I simply put them in a cold kiln, raise temp in kiln to 1100 degrees over 1/2 hour - 45 min or so, and then I take the bead immediately from the kiln to the flame, no fanning or slow introduction, or else you loose the heat it had from the kiln. I go fast and put it in the middle of the flame. I heat it in the flame consistantly before I begin working on it. Never had a crack or an explosion with that technique...however the beads I do this with were properly annealed once already, so they are more stable then a bead in the blanket. I think the key is getting them good an hot, which 1100 degrees is. I'd say, worst case you lose the bead completely, and you need to make a new one...if you don't like the one you have, then it's worth the risk of losing it. Furthermore, you will have more experience when you are done with a helpful technique of reentry and the more experience you have the better...good luck, if you haven't already done it...

Yes, I've done this a couple of times and bringing them up this higher temp before I re-introduced them into the flame helped to reduce the risk of cracking. Just remember to go back to your regulary annealing temp before you garage any beads.

Goodluck!!

Steph