My first project was a bowl made of transparent glass with millefiori pieces inset. I went with a clear base and green transparent glass and picked out a variety of millefiori colours/designs that I arranged in a pinwheel design. So far so good. Off the glass went into the kiln. I peaked in at the crash cool phase and during the soak and all looked good. I let it cool to room temperature (I swear, if it wasn't for safety I would only fire overnight - it is SO hard to wait for the kiln to cool before looking and unloading!) and was pretty pleased with the finish piece.
Until a noticed a crack!!! Yup, much to my dismay a big ole crack started spreading through the piece! I chalked this up to glass incompatibility until I put the next load in the kiln and paid better attention while the firing schedule was reviewed and saw that it was WAY off. Somehow the program had been changed to only 2 segments: ramp up to 1150, slower ramp to 1465 and then turn off! No hold on the way up, no soak, no crash cool, no slow ramp down! I had had some trouble switching between user programs a few weeks ago (from the full fuse progam to the slump program but was eventually successful and was able to slump a few projects) so I must have altered the full fuse schedule without knowing.
Lesson learned: ALWAYS review the firing schedule - even when you are not changing it at all.
My next project was to experiment with tempered glass. I brought home some tempered glass, shattered it and then attempt to fuse an oval mound that would later be slumped into a bowl. I wanted to preserve the fragmented look of the glass so I used a tack fuse schedule. I hoped this would bind the glass enough to become a solid piece but retain the individual grains. Nope - another failure. The pieces just barely adhered to each other and were easily broken off.
Lesson learned: tempered glass does not behave in the same way as fusible glass. Try a full fuse next time.
My last experimentation of the weekend was glass combing. An exciting but terrifying technique. Combing is the act of drawing a tool across molten glass. It involves opening the kiln at a temperature of around 1700 degrees F, which make it one of the hottest activities you can do with your kiln.
This experiment was fairly successful but the technique was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I definately need a lot more practice before I'll be able to make parallel, even drags but that wasn't the goal here - I simply wanted to try moving the glass around and not burn myself or catch anything on fire (success on all three accounts there!). I stuck my arm in and tried to rake across the glass as fast as I could a few times. Not very precise but good enough.
Lessons learned: get a proper rake with one fork that is designed for kiln work (thicker metal, long rod and good handle) instead of using the turkey fork from the kitchen. Seriously. Another lesson learned: at this temperature glass spreads out and raking results in uneven edges. Be prepared to do much more cold working than usual.
Before firing:
After firing and raking:
I also did 2 jewelry loads but the last load was still cooling when I left for work this morning so I'm not certain if those pieces turned out. I had ordered some better ring bands as well as bracelet blanks before I went on vacation and was dying to use them (hmmmm...I may have a problem with patience - I think this is the third such comment in this post alone). I made a bunch of new rings and my first bangle bracelet and link bracelet. Pics to come soon!
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