Quote:
Originally Posted by fyrebeadz*
this is an awsome thread but I really would hope that if you are spending that much time making a bead like this you DON'T put it in a crock pot to anneal (or rather not anneal it). It would be a shame to have it crack at some later point. PLEASE use a kiln! Your heart won't be broken then..........and neither will your bead.
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I agree with Donna! Even batch annealing can be tricky once you start adding so many layers - the bead just gets too big to cool evenly in vermiculite... it stays hot on the inside, so it cracks. I didn't have my own kiln for two years and a series of broken florals were finally what drove me to buy one so I could go straight from the flame to the kiln. It *was* heartbreaking when they cracked!
Possibly what DeAnne meant was just giving the bead a final gentle flame bath to even out the worst stress before cooling in vermiculite for batch annealing in a kiln. Some sources still call this "flame annealing" although that term is falling out of style because lampworkers don't want to confuse this process with actual kiln annealing, which is a separate step. Small florals can be batch annealed this way (flame bath, vermiculite cool, batch anneal in kiln), but once they start getting over 15mm thick it gets dicey.