Hi Dawn. I posted this somewhere else, but I know I am repeating it in this thread. I was revealing my horrible experience with Raku. I heated and heated my bead till I saw the bright white flame and some smoke on top of that. But then, the mandrel melted about 1/4" from the bead and the whole thing came down onto my desk top. Luckily it missed my lap. What a fiasco!! I was using Effetre black with dense black/Raku twisty design. My mandrel was 1/8". So I know I overheated it. It's going to take me a while before I learn the correct color of the flame. Also when you heat it that hot , you lose the shape of the bead and it's not easy to reestablish the nice ends. So I think the lesson for me is to back off a lot with heat. The color of the fallen bead looked just uggggg.... Back to square one for me!! Sachiko
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