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Old 2013-10-16, 4:46am
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Anne Londez Anne Londez is offline
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Join Date: Apr 11, 2006
Location: Switzerland
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I've been teaching beadmaking for over 10 years now and I am pretty definite that this is a shocked bead issue.

The question is not just how thin your beads are, it is how long you keep them in the press without reheating them and how long you reheat the glass after the bead has been in contact with the metal.
The thinner the bead, the faster it will lose heat so the faster you need to put it back in the flame. Even if most of the bead stays hot enough, the thinner layer that is over the mandrel hole may have been shocked (i.e. the glass got below the temp where it is elastic enough to handle stress) and if that part of the bead is not taken back to a soft state, the stress will not be erased and the bead will crack because it will have been shocked.
I would advise you to press quickly, go back in the flame immediately and reheat carfeull along the mandrel on both sides. If the pressing is not what you want, do it in stages until you are sure that you get the timing right. Does that make sense ?
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