More adventures in glass fusing

[kaliha]

Had a go at some more glass fusing this week.



I stumbled across Glass Kanvas the other day and their dead easy tutorial for making a flower pendant. Realising that this will be a brilliant way to practice cutting glass as well as fusing I decided to give it a go.

First I cut a lot of centimetre square pieces of glass, the 'petals' are a green/magenta dichroic glass and the centre bronze dichroic glass with two pieces of clear glass on top.


I didn't have enough space to fuse all the bits at once. So I picked three random pieces and arranged them so that when they started to fuse they wouldn't fuse together.


Three minutes later and the glass was cooking nicely in the kiln. The light-glowing patch visible through the hole is the molten glass.


A comparision: on the right, my three pieces of fused glass. Note how the green of the unfused dichroic glass (on the bottom left) has now turned blue.

They weren't quite round enough so I decided to do the next batch for 3.30 minutes to hopefully round them up a bit.


And here they are, post-fusing. Yes, they are round, but can you see how they've turned a sort of olive green?


You can tell better when they're next to each other. It's as if there's a film over the glass.

A bit annoyed I did some investigation and discovered this is a classic case of devitrification - this is where the glass is heated for too long at too high a temperature and the dichroic surface is burning/burnt away leaving a nasty grey film. Yuck.

I've ordered more of this glass (£10.89 for a 10cm x 10xm piece (ouch!)) and I'm going to run some tests. I'm going to cut some 1cm square pieces and fuse at a lower microwave temperature for 3, 3.10, 3.20, 3.30, 3.40 etc and see how they turn out. If I'm doing it at a lower temperature then the glass won't be getting so hot and I won't be ruining the dichroic coating on the glass.


My next project a 1cmx3cm pendant with a slider hole which I'm going to work on next week.

Comments

[abby-i.livejournal.com]

Cool! I've rather got into glass myself lately, though more of the vase/bowl buying kind, and less of the making. As a result though I'm finding this all rather interesting.

[--kali--.livejournal.com]

I'm having great fun doing it. Maybe one day I'll progress onto vases, not in my tiny current kiln though.

[kittybacklash.livejournal.com]

I love shiny glass stuff.
I have a green glass heart necklace at the moment, and it's gorgeous.

Also, that episode of Buzzcocks was hilarious.

[--kali--.livejournal.com]

That episode of Buzzcocks made me laugh up a kidney.

[supertrink.livejournal.com]

i love reading your glass posts. this stuff is so cool!

[--kali--.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I hope one day another beginner glass maker will stumble upon them and see where not to go wrong. I've found it really really hard to find resources. Glass artists aren't the shariest of people. I suppose because it affects their livelihoods.

[gamiila.livejournal.com]

The experiment may not have been to your satisfaction, but I still think those pieces are pretty!

[--kali--.livejournal.com]

I've ordered more of that green glass so hopefully I'll be able to perfect the firing times.

[kissingdaylight.livejournal.com]

These are so beautiful! You need to visit Murano, Italy if you haven't already. :)

[sal101010.livejournal.com]

I'm loving reading these fusing adventures. It's just a shame that the original material is so expensive!

[--kali--.livejournal.com]

I know, the cheapest place I can get dichroic glass from works out at 25p per square centimetre, so it gets very very expensive very quickly, which is why I ask for bits of glass offcuts for presents. And trawl eBay for bits and pieces (although even on eBay it's not cheap)