What Does Annealed Mean?
Nothing is worse than paying big prices for a bead that will self destruct! Beads that are not annealed have no guarentee that they will not self destruct at some point in the future. Beads that are not annealed can explode at the slightest temperature changes. It is said that you can hit an unannealed piece of glass with a hammer and nothing will happen to it, but then scratch or lightly bump it and it will result in glass shards flying everywhere. No bead should ever just up and blow up in half or into tiny little shards on it’s own! There is science to this and this can turn into a very long discussion, so I will try to keep it short here. When glass is melted & shaped into beads (or any other kind of object)there is built up stress that remains inside the beads after cooling them. This is caused by the glass expanding when hot and contracting when cooled. Glass cools from the outside to the inside. Therefore the temperature needs to be controlled to come down slowly and allow the a
