Fresh From the Kiln

Large Petal Dish

Gosh I need to make some glass! I have been accepted at Saltaire Arts Trail in May and I have very little stock. Better stop surfing Pinterest and order some more glass today. 

Fresh from the kiln

Glass tiles ready for slumping

I'm so happy that I have finally got my Bullseye fusing programme right after lots of adjustments including holding temperature, full fuse and annealing temperature.

Tiles on slump moulds

Of course, having a larger kiln means that I can now fire larger pieces and more of them too. In the past it would take a week to fully fuse four coasters as I could only fire two on the kiln shelf - now it takes me 2 days to fuse 16 coasters! Yay! 

A small dish would take 3 days to make, fuse and slump. Now I can slump four dishes at once and make glass panels up to 30cm in size. OK, so not huge but big enough for me. 

My lovely large kiln arrived last year, courtesy of Northern Kilns, who did a fantastic job of wrestling it up two flights of stairs and installing it in the attic. It's just the right height and runs off the ordinary electric socket and, most importantly, the heat elements are in the lid, sitting in transparent onyx tubes. So no more cold spots on the kiln shelf. 

Adrian from Northern Kilns

My tiny jeweller's kiln

Ceramic Molds for Glass

I use ceramic molds only to slump/sag my glass into dishes as I don't trust stainless steel molds not to crack the glass. This is because the mold heats up and cools off at a different rate to the glass (coefficiency) and stainless steel can be notorious for both cracking glass and for being difficult to kiln wash too.



So here's a selection of molds (moulds) that I use. All have been bought commercially and then coated with several layers of kiln wash before use. I use a haik brush to apply each layer of kilnwash, drying with a hairdryer in between layers. After a few firings the kiln wash needs reapplying. I use a haik for two reasons - one is that I like the textured surface the glass acquires and secondly, I get mad at the spray bottle when it clogs with kiln wash!



You can see by the color of the mold shown above that it has been primed with kiln wash but not yet fired in the kiln. After the first firing it loses its pink color and becomes white. The holes are to let the heat at the base of the glass escape, avoiding cracking. I love the shape of this mold, it makes the glass look as if the corners have been turned up.



Of course, haik brushes have their own frustrations - they shed long thin hairs in the kiln wash which should be brushed off quickly before applying the next layer. When the mold is bone dry the fused glass tile is placed on top of the mold and put through a fusing cycle. Once the glass reaches the temperature of 1400F the glass should slump nicely into the mold. General advice is that the slumped glass doesn't have to go through a "resting" temperature but I am a very cautious glass artist so I rest the temperature for 30 minutes at 1000F.



Going back to glass temperatures, because ceramic and stainless steel molds shrink at different temperatures it is easier to slump glass into a mold than to sag or drape glass or a mold. This technique can sometimes result in cracking. But don't let that put you off - lots of glass artists drape glass over stainless steel molds, otherwise we wouldn't see so many beautiful handkerchief dishes and candle holders for sale.


If you do choose to use a stainless steel mold then the best way to apply the kiln wash is to heat the mold in an oven and then spray with kiln wash whilst the metal surface is still hot. Otherwise the kiln wash just runs down the steep sides and makes a puddle at the base.



Squiggly Blue Glass Dish. All glass shown here is for sale at Glassprimitif on Etsy.

From Glass Rods to Fused Glass

I bought these twisted glass rods from Ross of Nightcatdesign and I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with them at first.



Here are the results - fused glass pendants and earrings with silver plate bails and sterling silver ear wires. The rods have been fused onto vanilla, white or black Bullseye glass that has been capped with clear glass. they were fun to make and I still have lots of rods to use.


When they are expose to the extreme heat fo the kiln the rods fuse flat and the colors spread considerably. This gives the glass an integrated appearance, that the colors were laid into the glass individually.


These glass rods work well on the vanilla glass. The green in the rod has a glitter to it which catches the light. The large bail is silver plate.


These matching earrings have a delicate look. The ear wires are sterling silver. Available for sale at http://glassprimitif.etsy.com

Creative Glass Guild January Challenge

The CGGE Challenge for January is for members to create glass art by recycling. The CGGE members have produced some fabulous glass items such as beads from wine bottles, fused roundels in stained glass, pot melts from scrap glass and fused glass "mistakes" smashed and then re-fused. Here is my contribution - although it is more of an example of "how not to"!
1. The first image shows a collection of old and battered picture frames that have float (picture) glass. All this glass is fusible but, as the source is unknown, I don't combine it with other float glass. Sometimes picture frames come with really poor quality glass and so I match like with like.
2. The second image shows a selection of metal items that I used as inclusions in the glass. These included copper, rusty washers and dubious metal decorations.
3. This image shows two fused glass coasters with metal inclusions. They were fused at the same firing in the kiln and they look fairly good!
4. The copper star shape has fused well because copper fuses at high temperatures and, as the copper shape is quite thin, it fused with a relatively flat air pocket inside the glass.
5. But look carefully at the coaster fused with rusty washers. Because of the variety and thickness of the metals the glass coaster has a stress fracture running along the base, which formed as soon as the coaster was removed, cold, from the kiln.
6. The final image clearly shows the stress fracture along the bottom of the glass. It's still in my studio and I look at it every day - waiting for the coaster to go "ping" and fall into pieces.

Creating a Glass Dish Part 4

After one day fusing and one day slumping the dish is finished. I take the cold dish from the kiln and check the back to see if any kiln wash is stuck to it. I then wash it in warm water with washing up liquid and dry it. Now for some kiln maintenance - I check the kiln shelf to see if it needs repainting with kiln wash and vacuum out the kiln ready for the next fusing.
These dishes are available from the following outlets:
www.glassprimitif.etsy.com
www.shawgalleries.co.uk
www.keighley.ac.uk/kaf

Creating a Glass Dish Part 3

So here is the glass, fully fused. It is really a glass tile that now has to be slumped. Glass can be slumped (falls into a mould) or sagged (falls over a mould). This occurs at a lower fusing temperature than full fusing. I prepare the mould in the same way that I prepare the kiln shelf, by applying kiln wash with a brush. I take care when applying the wash so that it doesn't run down the inside of the mould and gather at the bottom only. Before I place the glass tile on the mould I check the base to see if there is any kiln wash stuck to it or any residue. I rinse the glass in hot water and vinegar and dry it carefully. In this image you will see that the glass tile has been placed on the slumping mould. The glass should be the same size or slightly smaller than the mould. Any larger and the glass will slump over the edges as well as sinking to the bottom of the mould. The pink edge of the glass is actually the fresh kiln wash showing through the clear glass.

Now I fuse the glass to exactly the same schedule as before except, when the kiln has reached 1,400f, I turn the kiln dial down to 2 and leave it for two hours. The glass will have slumped into the mould but hasn't reached its strain release point so I don't put the glass through an annealing segment.

Creating a Glass Dish Part 2

When the glass components of the dish are dry I arrange them on a primed kiln shelf and glue some decorative fused glass blobs onto the hearts with Elmer's glue. I leave the glue to dry thoroughly before I place the kiln shelf in the kiln. I us a liquid primer that I make up myself and apply it with a haik brush. Haik brushes are quite hairy so I am careful to rub off any hairs that stick to the shelf. I give the shelf five layers of wash and dry each one with a hair dryer before applying the next. I used to spray the wash onto the shelf but this was too messy as the spray bottle kept clogging. Also, I like the texture the brush marks give to the base of the glass.

Now I switch the kiln on for the initial heating phase. I start at No. 2 on the kiln dial for the first hour and bring the glass up to it's strain release point by 150f every 30 minutes. When the heat reaches 1000f I put the bung in the kiln and take the kiln up to 1,500f at a faster rate. When the glass reaches its strain release point I look through the bung hole to check on the glass. The kiln holds this temperature for between 5 and 15 minutes (longer if its float glass) to soak the glass. By now the glass should look nicely rounded and glowing. I remove the bung and turn the dial back down to 2 (on my Aim kiln I reach 8 on the dial) until the temperature reaches 1000f. This is the rapid cooling phase and when the kiln reaches 1000f I replace the bung and leave it to soak at this temperature.This enables the glass to anneal so that becomes tempered and won't shatter when the kiln is cold. I like to leave the glass to soak for a minmum of one hour . Then I turn the kiln off and leave the glass to cool to room temperature.

About Float

"One day we'll float....take life as it comes" PJ Harvey

I first started out fusing with float glass. It's cheap, it's plentiful (ask for scraps at your local frame maker's) and it's easy to cut. Float is called "float" because it is poured onto a bed of molten tin within a furnace and then machine rolled. It is totally flat and is used for window panes and picture glass. It's disadvantages are: it takes longer to reach full fuse temperature than most other glass, it sometimes becomes cloudy or milky during fusing and it can send splinters out when grinding. If you want to avoid cloudy glass (devitrification) then spray it with A Spray before it goes in the kiln and wear those goggles when grinding! Tempsford Glass sell Spray A.
http://www.tempsfordstainedglass.co.uk/
At first I fused copper wire and copper sheet between two pieces of float but then I discovered coloured float confetti. Now coloured float is widely available (only in transparents at the moment) which makes it cheaper to create dishes and coasters than using Spectrum or Bullseye. The good news is that dichro coated float is also available, although it's not as nice as dichro coated Bullseye.

Funky Fish

I make a selection of glass fish from scraps of glass. The glass nuggets are fused in the kiln before I place them on the fish so that they form a blob rather than fusing flat. I start off by cutting out a paper template and drawing round it onto the glass, using a permanent marker pen. Once I have cut the basic shape I then grind it into a better shape. Then the fun part is sorting through my spare glass to decide on colours and decorative shapes. I really enjoy cutting glass, the more awkward the shape, the better the challenge. Grinding large pieces is boring but shaping difficult pieces such as hearts is very satisfying. Once everything is shaped, washed and dried, I put it all together with touches of Elmers Glue. I fuse the hanging wire between two pieces of glass to secure it. Then into the kiln for fusing. The exciting part is taking the glass out when the kiln has cooled to see what I have got. I have three fish designs at the moment, Submarine, Flounder and Tiddler. I'm not particularly fascinated by fish, but they sure are fun to make!
A selection of tiddlers are available in my Etsy shop.