Opal White glass

Made with Tin oxide / phosphate-crystal opacifiers. An opaque color. Prone to devitrification with repeated reheating.

Not a tint but an opacifier. It works by growing microscopic crystals in the glass that scatter light instead of transmitting it, which is what makes it opaque rather than colored. Opal and opaque whites are commonly documented as the colors most prone to devitrification (a whitish, rough, crazed surface) after too much time in the heat, so plan shorter reheats around it.

Why every color also needs to physically match

Chemistry sets a glass's color; physics decides whether it can actually be combined with other colors. Every glass has a Coefficient of Expansion (COE): how much it expands when heated and contracts when it cools. The number is in units of 10⁻⁷ per °C: COE 104 means 104 × 10⁻⁷ per °C, which is 10.4 parts per million per °C. If two colors in the same piece have different COEs, they pull against each other as the whole thing cools after being worked, building up internal stress. That stress shows up as cracking, sometimes immediately and sometimes weeks later, and it happens regardless of how well the colors chemically get along. This is separate from a color's chemistry: a compatible COE match doesn't guarantee a nice color combination, and a great color combination is worthless if the COEs don't match. Common named systems include COE 104 (soft lampworking glass, with long working time and the most color variety), COE 96 and COE 90 (fusing systems), and COE 33 (borosilicate, high-temperature). The specific number for any given colored rod depends on its manufacturer's formulation, not the colorant family alone, so this app doesn't assign COE numbers per color for that reason, and neither should you without checking the actual supplier data for the glass in hand.

All glass colors