Color Testing - Gaffer Clear

A couple weeks ago the Gaffer Gals from Gaffer Glass USA had a booth at the Northwest Bead Society Bazaar and they brought samples of their new 104 COE Clear. They wanted us to check it out and I got to my torch is try it out. The striped beads above are CIM commando, peace and Effetre medium red cased in Gaffer Clear. It had a nice working consistency. It was butter soft and melts really smoothly. I didn't have any scumming, but did some little seed bubbles, but they seem to have disappeared once on the beads.It has nice optic clarity and depth.

I have to say that so many lampworkers use the silver glass from Double Helix, Precision, TAG, etc that I really wish that this clear worked better with the silver colors. It turned my Clio green.  I had very limited amount of sample, so I only used it over clio. I'm not sure how it reacts with other silver colors, but suspect will be similar given how silver colors are made. The beads below on the left side are the Gaffer clear over clio (which is over opal yellow). For some reason it was super hard to catch the green in the photo, but the bead on the top is even more green than on the photo. The larger bead on the bottom has significantly less green so much so that you can barely see it, but is over all "muddy" to my eyes, like there is a greenish tinge over the bead. If worked right, it could be ok if you could control the green.  The center of the large bead is partially the opal yellow showing through and is enhanced by the green tinge.  On the smaller bead the top has a green cast over the pink, which gives an OK color to the clio, but the bottom is full on chartreuse green (much more so in person) and it is metallic in real life as well. Really ugly, muddy and not sell-able. It is the same issue that Aether gives with clio, I hunted  for a photo and finally found one, on the right below. At the very bottom is Clio with Effetre clear or zephyr and it is the bright pink we know and love.

Finally thoughts: YAY nice clear over regular colors, NO over Clio. 

I don't know when this will be available nor the price, but if a decent price, will get for casing non silver colors.