Wanting to make a complex murrine

[Moth]

Hi guys.

I have searched the archives and found lots of great information on the micromosaic murrini construction, but I have a need to build one right at the torch.

I want it to resemble a dogwood flower of sorts. I drew a picture of what I want the flower to look like and started picking apart the different segments that could be made in advance and then put together at the torch. I figure there are 4 different simple canes I can pull, then apply them to a base of thinned down clear rod (not quite stringer), filling in the spaces between with clear to keep the petals and other elements properly aligned.

Now, my question is, once I have the murrini built, (which I have pretty good confidence that I can do it) do I have to anneal it before cutting it into the chips?

Also, does anyone at all have any helpful advice they would like to share before I start on this? I figure I will start working on it tomorrow night, so anyone who can chime in before then will be greatly appreciated.

Particularly, any tips of keeping the end of the cane nice and flat as I build up on the layers? Should I cut my prebuilt pieces of cane into short lengths and just fuse them onto the base, or should I fuse the end of the cane onto the base and then nip off the rest of the rod? Any words of wisdom would save me a lot of frustration.

Thank you!
~~Mary

[Steve Wright]

Make your elements and pop them in the kiln to cool if they are much more than a quarter inch thick. Cut the elements to the length you want to work with and heat in the kiln to 1020 degrees.

Start your assembly by putting a bit of moretti on the end of a Boro punty. Use the buttered end of the punty to stick to the end of one of your heated elements, get the center element. Move right to the torch and heat the element you just captured.

Heat up the end of a pair of hemostats and grab the next element from the kiln. Move quickly to the flame and heat both pieces where they will connect. Make the edge of the new element more molten than the center and press together, starting at one end and moving to the other.

After everything is together add scrap to the end, as there will be waste on both ends of the pull. If you final murrini is one inch in diameter, add a 1 inch dome of scrap to the end.

Anneal the pulled murrini, unless it is around 1/4 inch. Those smaller murrini I let cool on my work surface.

The hemostat that I use to grab components has a curved tip that I have ground a notch to make it easy to pick up a small murrini element.

Steve

[Ray Ansin]

Yes it is quite a simple matter to make complex murriae. It just takes time and annealing of the segments before cutting to length and assembly.
The more accuratly shaped that your segments are, helps minimise any distortion to the final preform. Which is assembled as described by the previous reply. Then carefully melted together and drawn out to the final cane.
My constructs are about the size of a small cup and pull out to between five and eight feet of cane. These have to be again annealed prior to cutting up.
Any trapped air lines can cause the cuts to run, so it is essential to eliminate most of the trapped bubbles in the melting together of the segments.
I vacuum encase my segment constructs to totally eliminate trapped air.
Best of luck
Ray Ansin
http://glassbeads.co.nz

[Moth]

Hi Steve,
I spent quite a bit of time at your site last evening actually. What helped me most was the adding scrap glass to the ends of the gather so the waste from the pull isn't important. That was something I wouldn't have come upon myself until after wasting a lot of cane. You have some of the most well put together tutorials I have ever seen. Thanks for your help, you did an excellent job of describing the process to me.

Ray, thanks for your help as well. I will really try to watch out for those air bubbles, but vacuum encasing really isn't an option for me at this time. I tried to visit your site, but the link in your post isn't working. I will try typing it into my browser and see what happens.

I appreciate the input!

~~Mary

[Ray Ansin]

Thanks for your kind response..
Last night I had a very late session making lilac rose petals and forgot the www.
It should be http://www.glassbeads.co.nz Sorry about that.
Incidently for years I made the constructs exactly as described. The vacuum encasement is only a recent innovation in the last two years.. Still of course needing to add substantial blobs of clear onto the ends to facilitate lessening the loss of valuable colour and construct.
regards
Ray Ansin