A while ago, I purchased a small stash of Japanese Satake glass rods. I kept hearing that this glass that is a ‘match made in heaven’ for those of us with single fuel torches. So I just had to try it!

When I first got it and tried it, it was a disaster! I boiled every color to smitherines! Since then, those beautiful glass rods have just been in a lonley corner of my studio collecting dust…literally.

Then, a couple days ago, I decided to try using this glass again. This attempt was slightly more successful than the last.

Satake glass turns to drippy molten soup in an instant making it very difficult to control, much less achieve a pleasing and symmetrical shape. I did manage a nice bi-colored tab bead and heart. BUT……what I forgot, is that Satake glass anneals at a lower temperature than the Italian/German glass I normally use. So when I pulled these Satake beads out of the kiln the next morning…this is what I saw…

You can see how the glass slumped in the kiln. Also, the brown on the disk-shaped bead ended up overheating and discoloring a bit, turning more metallic.

This is a very tricky glass and one that I probably won’t be using often as the methods I’ve grown accustomed to simply don’t apply to Satake. It is also considerably more expensive, so although it’s fun to play with, the most I will probably do with this glass in the future is just make spacer beads with it.

C.C.