Dicro woes

[nigeljohnson73]

Love dicro!!! So I've been playing with it. Mostly abstract play pieces seeing what the different bits do and how they react with regular glass and iridium and I'm generally enjoying myself and have a pretty well worked process with my microwave kiln. I have generally had a bunch of success with the dicro getting much richer after firing. You can see a few examples in the "squares good.jpg" image attached. This all works at just past a tack firing and full fuse.

Squares good

Inspired by some 1920's abstract I thought I'd try something I've been wanting to do for a while - see "20s abstract.jpg" The dichro is not very prominent regardless of how you swing this in the light. Although there was some shrinkage of the dicro layer leaving a bit of clear before the stringers it's still now as prominent as the black cherry on black I'd used before, or the anything else on clear in the previous image. This was pretty much a full fuse.

20s abstract

In another one I tried I put the dichro on top of the stringers just past the tack fuse and again, very underwhelming dichro. "good morning.jpg"

good morning

As long as I leave the dichro alone, not touching anything else it doesn't seem to matter if I use a 2mm, 3mm or 6mm base, or full/tack fuse I seem to get a good reflective colour. Place it alongside or on stringers on 3mm white opal and all bets are off.

I have some physics based ideas of why this is happening with the dicro glass not being able to run away under the coating, but does anyone have a proper reason

Any help much appreciated.

[Valerie Adams]

What brand of dichro are you using? Early on, I used to buy scrap packs that were of unknown origin (Ebay, etc.) I still have some dichro that I've labeled 'duds' because they just don't have superior coating to make them truly pop. The other thing is, on your white piece, there's not as much contrast between the white glass and the dichro, perhaps providing a bit of an optical illusion that the dichro is duller. I've also had some black cherry that was rather flat. I found it worked best over a very dark background and capped with clear.

Have you tried firing your dichro coating down, to see the different effects?

I'm sure those with master-dichro experience will chime in. But you're doing what most would recommend: keep experimenting, taking photos, and keeping good notes.

[nigeljohnson73]

I'm using bullseye glass and dichro, all 90 COE.

I did accidentally fire some dichro with the coating down, the little bubble bit on here:



It's interesting that the glass starts off pretty clear and then gets the pearl coating above (I think this was red candy though), but is so much less pronounced on the white. The black cherry on black looked like a bit of square aluminum foil, I was hoping the same would happen on clear.

[nigeljohnson73]

...
I did accidentally fire some dichro with the coating down, the little bubble bit on here:
...

Sizzlesticks