Beautiful wave mold with recess for candle

Doing a practice slump first. I full fused together 2 pieces of 3mm clear glass, 6 1/2 by 7 3/4 inches with the following firing schedule:

400dph...............................1250 degrees................................hold 30 min
600dph................................1480 degrees...............................hold 15 min
Full........................................900 degrees...............................hold 30 min
150 dph.................................700degrees.................................hold 1 min
Full..........................................70 degrees.................................OFF

And that worked pretty well, so I am going to try to slump this onto a wave mold with recess for candle.

As you can see the fused glass panel is slightly longer than the mold, but there is a curved end to it on the right and I am hoping that the glass slumps down to the small edge, but we shall see.   That is the most important question about the slumping, like the previous slump there is a circular indentation, slightly deep which I hope it slumps into .  Thus i will hold on it longer, not as long as the other slump because that is deeper, per se, but long 30 min.  I will use the following slump firing schedule:

300dph..................................1220degrees......................hold 30 in
Full..........................................900degrees.......................hold 1 hour
100dph...................................700degrees.......................................
Full ..........................................70 degrees..............................Off

In the future I plan to put 2mm with 3mm clear glass making it less heavy and I will try to fuse a leaf in it, as requested by Will and in another I will be adding flowers.  Fun experiments to come.  But now I see if it will slump and whether it is too long for the mold.


It worked, as the following picture will show, so now I am going to try the whole thing again, using a piece of 2mm clear and cover it with white and green mix, 3mm. I will fuse this first using a schedule suggested in Bullseye web site for getting rid of bubbles then I probably will add some decorations, I was thinking of green pine like additions and tack fuse that and then slump the whole thing.  The whole piece will be 6 1/2 " by 7 1/2" instead of 6 1/2" by 7 3/4" that I used on the practice piece.

I full fused the next piece one using special bullseye firing to minimize bubblesResults were ok, not great, but they also said you could use clear powder in between layers to minimize bubbles.  I will try that next.  The resultant piece had uneven edges, a couple of bumps, which makes me think it fired too hot, and I had to grind edges to try and smooth it out.  Got to remember to take the grinder out of studio or the water in it will freeze over night.  I cut some forest green glass with my mosaic nippers and placed it on the piece to sort of resemble a pine tree and a fern like thing.  I am now tack fusing it using the bullseye schedule:

600dph........................1450 degrees............................20 min
Full................................900..........................................1 hour
100dph.........................700...........................................1 min
Full..................................70..........................................Off

This tack fuse was a little more than I wanted.  I got my kiln, a Paragon Fusion 7 glass kiln with a ceramic fiber top in place of the firebrick top, which really keeps the heat in.  So I think I have to fire it a little lower and not hold for so long.  Neverthe less I am slumping it now and will post a picture of the finished project.

Slumping round disk with uneven surface

I am currently slumping a 6 inch round clear disk, with an uneven surface because I full fused s thick glass flower to one side and a thing glass flower to the other side,  made up of 2 2mm clear glass disks, into a relatively steep mold.  So small piece of glass into deepish mold.  After seeing video in Bullseye education, I learned that it should take more time to slump into a deep mold than to slump into a bigger mold that is relatively shallow.  So I used the following firing schedule:

200dph, I choose to ramp up slowly, because of the uneven surface, thinking to give the glass enough time to heat up evenly.  I will ramp up to 1210 degrees, here again the process temperature I read, is not so important but the hold time is.  I choose to hold for 45 minutes at process temperature.  Then from there all is the same.  It ramps down to 900 degrees as fast as possible.  Hold 1 hour.  Then 100 slowly dph until it goes to 700 degrees and then full power until room temperature.

             200dph.......................1210 degrees...........................hold 45 min

Full..............................900 degrees..............hold 1 hour

100 dph......................................700 degrees............hold 0

Full ...........................................70 degrees...................off

So, I will be looking to see whether or not the glass breaks and whether or not it slumps correctly.  It worked, here are the results.

Tack Fusing

Tack Fusing

I am going to tack fuse these flowers onto 2 pieces of circular clear glass previously full fused together.  First I am full fusing 2 pieces of circular clear glass using the full fuse from the colour de verre and then I will tack fuse these guys to it.  So in my mind it appears that one of the most important questions in glass fusing is the firing schedule.  In most cases I have found that the Bullseye schedules are best.  And that simple is best.  Each time I have tried to make up a firing it has not worked out, either the glass broke or it was beset with devitrication.  But for the base in this project which is 2 pieces of 2mm circular glass I have used the firing schedule recommended by the colour de verre instructions with some minor alterations on my part and that was:

400dph..................................................1250 degrees.....................hold 30 min
600dph...................................................1420 degrees....................hold 10 min
FULL.......................................................900 degrees.....................hold 1 hour
100dph....................................................700 degrees......................hold 1min
Full............................................................70 degrees......................Off

So I am going to use the tack fuse schedule that is recommended by Bullseye for a first tack-fuse firing of a piece composed of one layer of 4mm base glass and an application of frits and powders.  I have 2 layers of 2mm glass covered with multiple layers of glass, frit and other additions.  The schedule is as follows:


600 dph................................................1450 degrees......................hold 15 min
FULL......................................................900 degrees......................hold 1 hour
100 dph..................................................700 degrees.......................hold 1 min
FULL........................................................70 degrees........................Off

That flower I tried to create is multi layered, the pieces of glass are pieces i got with my mosaic chopper from a previously fired screen melt.  So this design may be a lot thicker than an application of frits and powders that are described in the Bullseye instructions.  Nevertheless I am trying it anyway.  I will tack fuse that flower and the blue flower along with some stringer and single pieces of glass onto the circular panel that I have already fused together and see if that works.

Upon further reflection, and further reflection is always a good thing, I decided not to tack fuse it but to full fuse it instead.  Since there were so many thick pieces of prefired glass and so many different amounts I thought a full fuse would be better.  So I am using the following schedule:

400dph....................1250 degrees.............................hold 30 min
600 dph....................1470 degrees............................hold 15 min
FULL.........................900 degrees.............................hold 30 min
150 dph.....................700 degrees.............................hold 1 min
Full .............................70 degrees.............................OFF

The full fused worked although now the disk has an uneven surface. this is going to effect how I slump it.

Fusing a panel that will later be used for slumping

The snowflakes from the Colour de Verre molds worked, although I hope that the next ones I make are even better.  I intend to
tack fuse these to small glass squares which I will later use for slumping.  So following the instructions which are linked to the
Colour de Verre  Delphi web site, I took two 3 and 3/4" squares of glass, one 3mm blue transparent and the other 2mm clear along with another, one 3 mm green and a 2 mm clear glass which I am fusing with the following firing schedule which I slightly altered:

400dph.......................................1250 degrees....................................Hold 30 min.
600dph.......................................1420 degrees....................................Hold 10 min.
FULL............................................900 degrees......................................Hold 60 min.
100 dph........................................300 degrees....................................off

The firing schedule that I altered had segment 1 heating at 300 dph until 1250 degrees and segment 2 also heating at 300 degrees, but I thought that would go too slowly through the devitrification phase, so I sped it up.  Otherwise all remains the same.

Tack fusing and slumping the snowflake on 3 and 3/4 inch squares

So I followed the colour de verre instructions for this project which included a 3 part firing plan, the first was a panel fuse in which I placed 2 unadorned pieces of glass on top of each other, the firing schedule for this is in previous blog.  The only change I did there was to ramp up the segment one to 400 degrees and ramp up segment 2 to 600 hundred degrees.  I also cool down the piece to 900 degrees instead of the 960 degrees suggested in directions

The second step was to tack fuse the snowflake to the glass.  In this step I ramped up 300 degrees in the first segment and took it to 1225, firing schedule was as follows:
300 dph..........................1225 degrees............................hold 30 mins.
400dph...........................1325 degrees............................hold 10 mins
Full ................................900 degrees..............................hold 1 hour
100dph...........................600 degrees...............................off

Tack fusing was successful, snowflakes retained all of their shape but lost some of the "snowy" look.  Could that be because more heat was used?

Finally I slumped the whole thing twice.  After the first one, I noticed some pulling on the sides, so I corrected that by lowering the heat slightly and holding longer.  The firing schedule I used for the second one, the green one is as follows:

300dph.............................1215 degrees......................hold 15 mins
Full ....................................900 degrees......................hold 60 mins
100dph...............................700 degrees......................hold 1 min
OFF

Colour de Verre

This is a new mold from the Colour de Verre glass which includes a 5 and a 6 point snowflake that should be filled with 5 to 9 grams of fine frit respectively.  This wont be easy to measure out but i will try.  In an attempt to not overdo I underdid, I think and the result was pretty but fragile and it broke.  So I am trying it a second time, this time carefully filling each space without overflowing on the top.  I also tried to mix blue with clear fine frit and I increased the firing schedule as follows:

300 dph..................................1280 degrees............................hold 10 mins
FULL.......................................900  degrees............................hold 30 mins OFF.

This is called the "Snowy" Casting schedule in opposed to the "Icy" casting schedule.  And now I just read that I should have increased the temperature by 15 degrees for COE 90 glass.  This will teach me to read all the directions in the future.

So it worked one, 5 point, one six point and neither has broken,  They are still very fragile, I am going to add then to sheets of glass, 3 3/4" by  3  3/4" square and then slump them.

christmas trees

Christmas trees are my next project.  I am using the following firing schedule taken from Gillian Hulse's  book, Kiln Formed Glass:

Tack Fuse Firing:

400 dph..........................1000 degrees.........................Hold 10 mins
600 dph..........................1420 degrees..........................Hold 5 mins
Full..................................900 degrees..........................Hold 1 hour
100 dph...........................700 degrees...........................hold 1 min
Full  ..................................70 degrees...........................off

I used 1 layer of 3mm green glass which I topped with 1 layer of 2mm clear glass, inserted high temperature hook in between the two layers.  On top I placed a few stringers along with green, blue, yellow and red millefiori.  Pictures of the finished product to follow.  So here it is.  I forgot to attach the pot at the bottom, but it still looks ok, and the tack fusing worked well