Reactive Glass

[richsantaclaus]

Reactive Glass

Glass that has metallic elements from the periodic table in them sometimes react with each other to make another color.

Some of my favorite glass for marble making is silver glass. By that I mean glass that is infused with silver. And that silver cause chemical reactions. Those reactions translate to fusing or kiln forming glass.

When silver and sulfur get together good things happen. When copper and sulfur get together more good things happen.

The meeting of the glasses causes color changes or in the instance of turquoise and ivory or French vanilla a ring or brown or black outlines wherever the glass meets.

Sky blue and ivory or dark ivory make a black line between them.

When two glasses come into contact during heating and create a third color, specific ingredients in the two “reactive” glasses almost always cause this reaction. The most common ingredients, which lead to a reaction are: sulfur, selenium, copper, lead, and silver. As the chart below illustrates, reactions between these ingredients tend to fall into seven main categories.

........................Sulfur..........Selenium........Silver

Copper................X ..................X

Lead....................X...................X..................X

Silver...................X....................X

...................X indicates a reaction between the two ingredients..................

Here is another way to look at the reaction combinations:

1. Copper - sulfur reaction

2. Copper - selenium reaction

3. Lead - sulfur reaction

4. Lead - selenium reaction

5. Lead - silver reaction

6. Sulfur - silver reaction

7. Selenium - silver reaction

[lstmmrbls]

And some day someone will be able to tell me how or why a clear layer often forms where colors meet and on the surface of the glass. And often times this clear layer will pick up crystals and carry them from one color over another color making it appear that there is more than one color of aventurine when in actuality all the crystals came from on color band(on Pelters quite often)

[richsantaclaus]

Won't that be SO cool!!!!!

[migbar]

Aventurine is always in a transparent base glass, and transparent glass melts and flows at a much lower temperature than do the opalescent colors and white, so Peltier's aventurine does tend to bleed some.

A chunk of glass, when heated, will begin to melt on the surface, rather like a cube of butter set in the sun, because it heats from the outside; and possibly, this hotter glass at the surface could gain transparency.

[sissydear]

Thank you Mike, that clears up a bunch for me. I once saw a golden rebel that had aventurine in the black and in the red. I see how that happened now.

[richsantaclaus]

Thanks Mike!

[richsantaclaus]

Here are two marbles made using the metallic properties that take two colored glasses and make a third color. There were NO black rods used in making these examples - the metals reacted together to make the dark and black colors. Kinda cool I think!

[richsantaclaus]

Two more reactive glass marbles

[catfish]

Interesting. Thanks for taking the time Rich.