Or, put it another way, this is still a fairly erratic procedure, and this button is thus far the most evenly made. Unfortunately, I didn't want to mess up my background paper with some handi-tac, so it's flopped to one side, and looks as stupid as the rest. Oh well....
effetre soda lime, feb–mar 06. 37mm. The second button made using a combination of boro and soft-glass puntiles. Can you locate the scar of the soft glass punty? Hint: I boiled the glass something fierce:)
I mentioned yesterday that I only puntied up two buttons with a boro puntile before abandoning the approach, but I have yet to match this button in quality with the approach I'm using now: the advantage of using puntiles means I can completely finish everything but the shank before putting any stress whatsoever on the bead release, which has broken every time since I gave up using puntiles.
When I started, I used soft-glass punties; but they weren't stiff enough, and limited the size I could make the buttons. So then I switched to a boro puntile for the back, which worked much better, but necessitated transferring the button to a second soft glass puntile on the front (causing a scar, which actually doesn't bother me as much as it probably should)—a process, owing to my lack of experience, usually resulted in the wrong puntile cracking off multiple times before a successful transfer. And then, as I've mentioned (just once or twice) I had to pick out any boro that remained on the button. (A really good lampworker would not leave any behind, of course.)
Aggravating.
However, I did manage to do a pretty good job (for me) of applying the twistie, and even managed to melt it in nicely. This is the roundest button yet, and in my opinion, the most professional looking. And it did finally occur to me that hanging a 35+mm button off 4mm wide seed bead would be asking a bit much of a bead release that I use because it's easy breaking. So I will have to try some stronger stuff, like blue sludge, next time.
file created 09mar06
Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.
