I stick the first quarter of whatever rods I am going to be using in my kiln to pre heat and keep the rest on top so they are pretty warm when I introduce them into the flame. Very little shockiness doing it that way.
I am having issues with the Devardi clear over some of the silver colors like triton and psyche also. Serious incompatibility cracks. Also the dark transparent over sop white cracks every time and they are both devardi.
In defense of the clear over the silver, I had the same problem with moretti clear over the silver glass also. Will be trying out different clears with those.
Here is one set of frit beads I made mixing three colors of the devardi frit, they are red, orange and yellow but I would have to go down and look if you want the exact colors. The funny thing is the focal is encased (the whole bead is devardi glass) and I had no trouble with this one cracking or the other two that I did that have the yellow and oranges in them. And I have heard that those two colors don't like to be encased in almost any glass.
