[Moth]

Hi Steve,

I spent a good amount of time on your site this morning! I'm glad you posted and thanks for your input. I totally agree with you on the peeling glass thing. I do it for all my aquarium beads and can't believe the difference a little extra effort makes. Pristine clear for $8/pound and a few minutes work...you gotta love that. I have some 18mm solid rod I cut into chunks and was going to preheat in my kiln and pick up like Lewis did in his video with what I think were schott pucks. You show that in your video.

I just cut a 1/4" ring off the end of this hose and set it on my hotplate. The specs on the hotplate say it hits 750 degrees in 8 minutes. At 3 minutes the rubber hose started to smoke and melt so I doubt it would hold up to even annealing temp in the kiln.

Just gonna try heating the assembly inside the stump sucker at the last minute like you said, Steve. Was hoping to save myself needing 3 arms, but I don't see how I can get around it at this point. I thought if I could keep the whole stump sucker in the kiln or on the hot plate, I wouldn't have to preheat the assembly with the torch as much.

Thanks again and I'll post how I do...good or bad maybe somebody will learn from my mistakes. LOL

~~Mary