Annealing Glass, Important or Not?

properly annealed beads

So, you’ve started making glass beads, awesome! You hear about annealing your beads, but what does that really mean, and do you really need to do it?

The definition of “anneal” :  to cool slowly; to heat and cool to make less brittle;  to strengthen or toughen.

In lampworking, annealing glass beads means to heat and hold at a temperature of 950 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes, then slowly reducing the temperture over 6 – 8 hours until the kiln can be turned off at 500 degrees.

Why Anneal? The best way to explain why a glass bead needs annealed is this; a bead cools a lot like a cream soup. Have you ever made soup and as it cooled it got a “skin” on the top, but under the “skin” it is piping hot?  That is similar to a glass bead.  The outside of the bead will harden and be cooler than the inside, which is hotter.  If you don’t control the speed in which the bead cools and allow the outside to cool at the same time as the inside, it causes internal stresses to occur and you will usually end up with a cracked bead.

Even if you don’t anneal your beads and you get lucky and  have some survive, they are not likely to last long due to the stresses that remain inside the bead.  They don’t even have to be dropped to just crack for no reason.  A properly annealed bead will almost never crack. They are super strong and can literally be dropped on the floor without breaking. I call that “quality control”.

Now, if you have no intention of selling your beads or giving them as gifts, and you just want to keep them for yourself, then annealing is only important if you want them to last a long time.

What are your thoughts on annealing?  I would love to hear from you.