My First Bottle Beads

Well,

Here are my first bottle beads:

                                                 

My observations--and a disclaimer--I did not use this brand of wine on my beads--though it is a very nice wine!

1. It wasn't too bad making bottle beads.  The most difficult thing about it was overcoming the shockiness of the glass, which I did by preheating the glass shards in the kiln.  The only problem with that was, it took a LONG time.  I preheated the kiln at a ramp of 200 degrees per hour, so I wasn't up to bead annealing temperature for more than 4 hours.  Next time I'm going to try to ramp it up faster.  I did start making some beads and putting them in the kiln long before it was at annealing temperature.  It didn't seem to harm them at all.  I started playing with some shards after they were at about--maybe 350 degrees in the kiln and were still a bit shocky.  Not long after that, they worked out fine.

2. My bottle beads seem to be crystal clear.  That's good, but a bit disconcerting!  Why is it that wine bottles destined for the trash make crystal clear beads and glass rods--which can be very expensive--can be scummy?

3.  Wine bottles come in a rainbow of colors--provided that the rainbow is different shades of green!  Any donations of wine--or booze--bottles will be greatfully accepted, but NO GREEN, PLEASE!!!!!!!!!

4.  You don't want to see me start drinking more, do you?