ratichello help

[kelly]

hey all i was looking for some tips on doing a good ratti. i have been adding color on a rod twisting real tight, melting in then adding more lines and twisting in the opposite direction. the 1st twist always gets distorted. am i getting things to hot on the 2nd twist or is there another technique or step. thanks for any help.

[jusbag]

you can lay your second lines down by spiraling them on. that way you only twist for the first lines not the second set.

[duh]

it looks better IMO if you re twist rather than draw sprials...

but anyway... you need to get the glass evenly hot (heat slowly) when you twist so you can get an even sprial, and when you do sprial make sure you are twising enough on the first set because you are untwisting...so you gotta do it 2x as twisty as the spiral you are looking for

that would be my guess as to your problem (under twisting of the first set).... don't over twist though....gotta do it just right.

but ya take it real slow on the second twist, it will just twist right into a perfect ratti, and then u must stop, or itz fuked.....doesn't take much of a twist back....

[Marc VandenBerg]

Or you can try it more like the traditional furnace way, blowing a bubble into another.

First take a piece of wood and drill a hole that will allow you to stand a "cup on a point" straight up.

Make your first bubble, put your lines on, melt in and twist clockwise. Don't over twist cause your not going to untwist anything using this method. Blow the bubble into a small cup form, open the end, opposite your point and finish off the cup form. It's important to leave the point on or at least have somewhere for air to escape out the bottom of this cup form. Garage it.

Next make another bubble lay lines on it, melt them in, and twist counterclockwise (opposite of the first bubble). Make sure both bubbles have been blown evenly or the final piece will be all over the place.

Take the garaged cup, while keeping the 2nd bubble hot, heat it up above annealing temp but not where you'll see heat in the glass. Set the cup upright in the block of wood, heat your 2nd bubble really hot, stick it into the cup and blow. You now have a single bubble with lines twisted opposite each other. Using heat and little puffs at a time you can work the bubble to the end of the cup.

The drawbacks using this method, it takes more time than the above mentioned methods and its easy to trap unwanted bubbles between the two layers of glass. The outside layer can also have the tendancy to fade the colored lines out if blown to thin.

I used the method a few times years back just to try out the tech. However I did make a few pieces using this method creating sections that contained two completely different wig-wag patterns on top of each other.