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please pardon the lack of capitalization in this post, my shift key gave out.
Recently in my Glass Art Engine independent study at AU, I've been able to make gold ruby glasses with some success. Starting with 100g of spruce pine color base, i add .2g of black tin oxide and 1ml of dissolved gold. this gold solution has a fixed amount of gold per ml, this amount is known quantitatively. the ingredients are mixed thoroughly and then melted in an electric furnace at 1400c or 2552f. this will strike to ruby after 4 ish hours at 600-650c. when i mix 100g spruce pine with .4g black tin and 5ml, the gold strikes immediately when i pour it out of the crucible into a small graphite mold. i've also mixed an opaline gold as follows;
100g spruce pine color base
5ml gold solution aka .05g of gold
.4g black tin ox
4g stpp
1g potassium nitrate
1g boric acid
the tin helps with the solubility of gold to promote striking in the low temp range. the stpp is for opalescence. the potassium nitrate is being used as an oxidizer to keep the gold from forming metallic beads on the surface of the melt, this was a problem in an earlier melt. the boric acid was added just to balance things out a little. jacob willcox uses it in his melts to help with melting and compatibility. the two images included are lip trimmings from a vessel i made with the gold opaline.
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