I'm a peaceable soul. Really. Aside from the reprhensible habit of having opinions on everything I really am pretty tolerant and easy to get along with—I say please and thank you, and unabashedly run away from situations that I think are likely to damage my tender ego or person. (Well, except for the rollerblading, but you may be sure I wear absolutely every piece of protective gear manufactured.) I don't bang on walls in frustration or pull my hair in artistic angst. Most people will tell you that propane, let alone oxy-propane, is plenty hot enough for brazing the noble metals and their alloys. Natural gas is economical, and the new propane additives such as chemtane or chemolene burn very cleanly. I use an oxy-acetylene torch to do my metalwork partially because that's what my teacher recommended at the time, I grant you. Oh, I could justify it with vigorous defenses about my preferences for reticulated, bubbled, buckled and warped sheet, and in fact, especially since I tend to combine my metalwork with jaspers and other irregularly patterned beads, and often with chips and other less than regularly shaped beads, it makes a lot of sense to soften all those hard smooth surfaces. All true.

But let's be honest here: the real reason is that I secretly enjoy frying the bejeezus in metal. There's no guilt involved in using excessive force on something so inanimate, yet because metal is so typically unyielding there's a great deal of satisfaction in turning on the hottest of fuels, watching all those hard, sharp, unbending surfaces yield. “Take that! And that! Ha! The mad bead stringer who has to put up with holes too small, badly drilled, or sadly shaped isn't going to take any guff from you!”

(Obviously the above was written before I took up glass. That is to say, mid-90s, probably around the time I started the website. Though there's still a lot of pleasure in cranking the torch all the way up;)