Chalcedony Fail? Win? Unsure?

I've recently been trying out some new glass called Chalcedony from Gaffer Glass. Many people have been getting gorgeous results from it. I have unfortunately not :(

At left are my initial experiments. The two beads in back used a base of Moretti sky blue. The one in front is Moretti white. The back left bead has Chalcedony stringer. The other two have Chalcedony shards.

From what I've seen and read, the trick seems to be repeated cycles of extreme heating and extreme cooling. However, no matter what I did with these, all I can get is transparent, the light/pale yellowish color, or the dark red brown. hmmmmm.

At the the Bead and Button conference I got some tips that the Chalcedony works better when used with other Gaffer Glass rather than Moretti. Granted, I know they are different COEs and that if you use them together you have to use just a little of one and the majority of the other rather than a 50/50 mix. But I had seen other people get good reactions with Chalcedony shards on Moretti base. Luckily, I also picked up a lilttle sample of some Gaffer at B&B (THANKS!!!!). So this attempt is a base bead of black Gaffer with Chalcedony applied over it. I did a lot of reheating and gravity shaping before it finally turned colors. It turned out quite nice. However, some issues/questions remain: when I made this, I applied Chalcedony over the entire surface of the black, but the black "sucked" in the Chalcedony and I had to apply multiple layers of it before it stayed on top. Also, I applied the Chalcedony over the entire surface, yet it seems to only be visible in the middle. I wonder why it didn't turn colors on the ends as well? Or did the Chalcedony gather up in the middle and the black snuck out from under it on the ends? Perhaps it only changed color in the center because that is the part that was heated and cooled the most times due to gravity shaping on the ends? or because when heating the ends the center was right at the edge of the flame, which may be better for getting the desired effect than reheating in the center of the flame? hmmmmm. What if I want a "normal" shaped bead, and not something long and tubular?

And here is the final bead I tried. This is a base of Gaffer clear with a shard of Chalcedony over it. Again, the shard covered the entire bead when applied, but now color is only visible at the ends. No amount of heating and cooling could get color in the middle. And again its mostly the yellow/orange/brick red. There is a bit of pink at the ends but not much. It doesn't seem that the clear could've "swallowed" the shard, because I can't see it "inside". Perhaps the Chalcedony needs to be applied quite heavily in order to get reactions, though I don't know how people are getting results using it with Moretti then. Apparently more experimentation is needed. Luckily I have lots more Chalcedony. Not much Gaffer though so hopefully I can get it to work on the Moretti.

More results hopefully coming over the next few weeks...