FAQ



Answers: 

Okay, so what's the deal with 'lead' vs. 'soda' glass? Aren't they both soda lime glass?
Yes, they are both soda lime glass, but part of Satake's color line is leaded and the other part is not - they had to differentiate them somehow, so that's what they came up with.

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Well, how do I tell the soda from the lead? Is it an important difference?
Ever try to make a bead with one rod of 96 COE glass and one of 104 COE? Then you already know the problem. Since there are 2 COE's for Satake, here is an easy reference list for you, along with a breakdown of which is lead and which is soda.

Lead colors: (94 of them)	Soda colors: (66 of them)
120 COE	113 COE
A-01 to A-26	A-27 to A-40
no lead in E	E - all of them
G-01 to G-35	G-36 to G-40
S-01 to S-33	S-34 to S-40

Including both soda and lead, there are a total of 160 colors. These colors include primary colors, pastel colors, and colors based on tones from traditional Japanese kimonos, as well as several others that are really cool and different.

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What if I DO use them together - anything I should look out for?

You just gotta play by your own rules, huh?

Well, okay, if you gotta. Due to the differences in COE, if you limit use between them to a thin stringer or dots of one on the other there should be low risk of cracking. HOWEVER there are other pitfalls as well - in the case of soda reds/yellows/oranges, unless you encase it in soda clear there is an ugly chemical reaction between the pigments in the soda and the lead glass, or if you put lead of any color (including clear) on red/yellow/orange soda, it turns black. All the other soda colors don't appear to have that issue with lead. This is due to a chemical reaction between the lead in the lead glass and the pigments used in the soda glass to create reds/yellows/oranges - one of the reasons there aren't many reds and oranges in the lead glass line.

So - if you just GOTTA put soda on lead, make sure that if it is red/yellow/orange you encase it in clear first.  If you gotta put lead on soda, make sure it's not over red/yellow/orange unless that area is already encased in clear, or some other buffer color.

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What is the annealing schedule?

This is the annealing schedule recommended by Satake glass:
Anneal at 890°F for 10-20 minutes.
Lower to 750°F, 20 minutes for small beads, 1 hour for large beads.
Lower to 390°F for 2 hours.
Turn off and cool to room temperature.

From our own experiences at shopmonkey labs, we find that 890°F is way high, and we tend to get flat spots and beads sticking together.  From experience (and talking to other Satake lampworkers) we currently garage beads at 790°F, then raise the temperature to 850°F for 1 hour, then cool at a rate 100°F per hour. This works quite well, and doesn't make flat bits or make beads stick together.

Because beads made from Satake hold heat for much longer than other brands of soda glass, they are also well suited to cooling in vermiculite or under a fiber blanket and then being batch annealed, but shopmonkeys just like to pop them in the kiln and be done with it! ^_^.

WARNING:
Because of its thermal characteristics, Satake glass stays soft much longer than other brands of glass - So be sure it really has firmed up on the surface before you put it in the kiln, fiber blanket, or vermiculite, or you will end up with some unintended surface decoration! Japanese artists are often taught to blow on them while spinning the bead by quickly rolling the mandrel between their thumb and forefinger for a few seconds - it leaves the core more "molten" while the surface is nice and hard, resistant to surface deformation - but no matter how much you love your beads, don't give them a kiss! (at least not yet...true love can never be denied! ^_^)

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Any other helpful working tips before I get started?

Satake glass needs to be worked cooler than other soda glass, such as Moretti, BullsEye, etc. If worked too hot, bubbles will form on and under the surface, and many colors will fade.

Be sure your marvers are clean, and your mashers are rust free. Pitting on the surface of your marver or masher will produce pits in your bead. Rust is especially bad, making the bead pockmarked kinda like the surface of the moon.

Black glass (both lead and soda) will have a hematite look if worked cool, and will lose the metalic look if worked slightly warmer. When black is pulled into a stringer it stays black, unless the stringer is hair fine in which case it might look slightly purple.

Both lead and soda can be used similarly, but mixing the two in the base of the same bead is not recommended, as the differences in COE will in all probability cause cracking. However, like with 96 COE frit on 104 COE base beads and vice versa, small amounts of lead on soda or soda on lead should not cause problems.

Some good points to remember:

1. work cool! This stuff melts like buttah.
2. work pink opaques especially cool. They will lose their color easily.
3. do not encase yellow! I once made 6 really nice yellow encased beads, and every single one cracked nastily. Something about yellow, I guess...
4. be gentle. This glass is much softer than moretti when glowing, and it retains its heat much longer. You will need to be very gentle when shaping things like bicones and barrels.
5. Working Satake glass will make you a better lampworker - we think it's a more demanding glass than moretti in a lot of ways, but the results are well worth it.
6. have fun, experiment, and post pictures!

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Has anyone worked this glass with a hothead torch? If so, what were the results?

Have we used a hothead? You betcha - we ain't kidding when we say it melts like buttah. In fact, in a lot of ways, using a hothead on Satake is easier than on a propane/oxy setup, since the melting point is lower than moretti/bullseye/etc, and the hotter flame on the oxy setup is almost too much for the Satake. In fact, Japanese beadworkers using Satake use little air compressors with propane, and get really amazing results.

The lower heat of the hothead can give you a greater cushion against boiling and fading of colors (can be bad on the reds and pinks) since you can't put as much heat on your gather, even if you wanted to! And to paraphrase Satake glass legend Jeff Barber, working with Satake teaches you patience cause you just can't rush it with more heat.

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Gimme Gimme Gimme! I want all 160 colors now! Why won't you have lead Satake Glass for sale in anything other than sample packs until 2007?!?!      UPDATED!

We are but poor itinerant glass sellers and... well, maybe not itinerant, since we never go anywhere to sell glass (the interweb brings you to us!) but money does enter into it.
To not put to fine a point on it, we ain't got enough. We intentially keep our margins tight, and it seems minimum order quantities for wholesale prices from Satake scare off most re-sellers (a comparison of their prices to ours will give you a hint of how they go about stocking product). We, however, don't care if we are flush with too much glass on hand (too MUCH glass?!?! Ha!) - the only problem is the seed money to buy the stuff in the first place.

Thus, we determined to start out slow - first offer all 66 soda colors, then measure the response. If its good, and revenue meets projections, we can add the leads as well, which will hopefully be sometime in 2007 (if revenue ain't so good, 2007 will become 2008... or 2009...2010...2011...).  Until then, we will get leaded glass in smaller quantities, but because it won't be at "wholesale" volumes, we will only have enough to sell as 11 inch rods as part of sample packs.  Sorry.

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE
Huzzah! We now have some lead glass in stock, and more always kinda-sorta in the pipeline!  Instead of waiting until we could get all the lead colors, we decided to add new ones color by color so people could get their hands on some of the more requested hues - Ruby Veil, Orchid, Raspberry Sorbet, and on and on!  You can check out the available lead colors from the "Satake Lead" flag on the left banner!

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Being as I are a dumb gaijin, how do you actually pronouce Satake?

Just how it's spelled ^_^.

Okay, okay, we get your point. We got it wrong at the start as well, being as we is dumb gaijin too. Depending on your primary language and regional accent, you might pronouce it as "suh-Talk-ee" or "Ser-tacky" or even "Suh-take" (rhymes with rake).

However, use this in the presence of a Japanese speaker and they would have no idea what you were talking about. From hearing native Japanese speakers use it repeatedly in person (wow - people actually talking In Real Life? What is this offline world of which you speak?) the actual Japanese pronounciation is pretty close to "sah-tah-kay", with equal emphasis on each syllable.
Now you can go out with confidence into the world of spoken communication! We're going to stay here and write an email to someone on the other side of the room.

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Why can't I just buy bulk glass and pay for it without waiting for you knuckleheads to figure out how much it will actually cost me?

The rods we get from the Satake factory in Japan are all hand pulled - there can be diameter variation of up to 10mm between rods, depending on who was doing it that day, whether the rod was from the beginning of the pull or the end, or who knows what else (you can see a translation from Japanese of a neat illustrated diagram of the process here, which can also be found at the link on the bottom of the page titled How's it made?).
 However, all the rods are about 22 inches long, which means that there can be some real differences in weight from one rod to the next.  Since people rightly only want to pay for the glass they get, and the rods are of non-standarizable sizes, we have to charge by weight.  Since the only way we can know how much X number of rods weigh is to weigh them, we try to mix and match as best we can with the rods we have in stock to get as close as possible to your desired order weight.  If you go by the default inventory pick option, i.e. by rod, you will get X number of rods weighing whatever they end up weighing (if you have a preference for fatties vs. skinnies or vise versa, let us know when you place your order and we will do our best to fulfil your particular "kink" ^_^).

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HEY! What happened to the castle?  And what's up with the fish?

We updated our main site homepage, since the old one with the castle had been up for over 18 months and we were getting bored with it. Now you get a monkey! Isn't that better than a moldy old castle?  What, don't you like the monkey?  He likes you.  REALLY likes you. <wink wink>
The shop home screen is a pretty koi from Bigfoto, and we just like koi. When YOU get your own site, you can put up whatever pictures you want, too.

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Grrrr! I placed an order and you stoopid monkeys never responded! What kind of fly-by-night operation are you running around there, anyway!

<cowering pitiously> We're so sorry! There are only a few reasons how this could ever occur:
  1) We were eaten by a giant snake (YOU try getting a signal from in there!)
  2) You provided an invalid email address when you placed your order
  3) Your email server is blocking either our address or Paypal's.
If Shopmonkeys do not reply with an email from "name@dogmawglass.com" or an invoice from paypal in a time frame that you think we should, then in all likelihood one of these three things has happened (maybe more than one, that snake is an unstoppable killing machine!) Try sending emails to shopmonkeys@dogmawglass.com describing your terrifying rage from an email address you know works, or even more than just one email server...
I Will Not Be Ignored! you might scream in your most terrifying imperious voice, the one that makes shopmonkeys so very, very frightened... and we will of course scurry to appease your mighty anger.

  Assuming we weren't eaten by the snake - then you're on your own, baby.

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