Stupid Moment of the Month

And the month has only begun.....

I made a big batch of little accent beads out of PMC3 to hang on the medallions and make bead caps. I put one in the dapping block to make a bead cap and it got stress fractures in it. So I tested the tensile strength by trying to bend it....SNAP. So I tried another one....SNAP. And another....SNAP. I was snapping them in 2 like they were made of balsa wood. I checked the package insert for run time/temp and compared it to the PMC3 program on my kiln. The temp was consistent, but the times were a bit different. So I looked in the Rio catalog for more info and found a little note at the bottom of the page that for maximum strength you should fire PMC3 at 1650 for 2 hours. Now I usually work in PMC+ and use the program on the kiln (1650 for 10 minutes) and have never had a problem. But with PMC3, the program on the kiln isn't sufficient. Luckily PMC can be refired with no adverse effects. So I have refired all the little accent beads and then are quite strong now. And then I realized.....All the pendants (pictured below) that I made were from PMC3 and I used the kiln program.....damn, damn, damn. I decided to test one of the medallions that I hadn't assembled into a pendant yet.....SNAP. So, I have disassembled the pendants so I can refire the PMC3 medallions. I will reassemble them tomorrow. What a waste.