Dave Bross
02-10-2008, 10:27 AM
Went to Phil's (olympic color rod)over the holidays. He has a really good stock of german color cane and a LOT of different colors in canes in Spectrum 96 too. I thought I would mention this 'cause when you look around the website most of the cane is under lampworking.
The Spectrum cane is quite stiff and short compared to the lead glasses, and some complain of the color quality. I think the colors are OK if they're cased and not gotten too thin on the transparents, and the opaques are fine as is. Be careful with the opaques and too many heat/cool cycles. I used to pull cane from their cullet and just remelting the opaques one time in a furnace took them far enough out of compatibility to cause breakage.
One thing about the Spectrum cane is that it's all exactly the same size, whereas the german canes have huge variations in the cane size in the same bundle. I was glad I went down and looked for just this reason. For what I do with cane I would have been disappointed in the size variation if I had ordered without knowing that.
The Spectrum cane is quite stiff and short compared to the lead glasses, and some complain of the color quality. I think the colors are OK if they're cased and not gotten too thin on the transparents, and the opaques are fine as is. Be careful with the opaques and too many heat/cool cycles. I used to pull cane from their cullet and just remelting the opaques one time in a furnace took them far enough out of compatibility to cause breakage.
One thing about the Spectrum cane is that it's all exactly the same size, whereas the german canes have huge variations in the cane size in the same bundle. I was glad I went down and looked for just this reason. For what I do with cane I would have been disappointed in the size variation if I had ordered without knowing that.