Fusing Recycled Glass; Green Test; Firing Pendants

This firing had a few different things going on inside of it.

First; a small run of regular green farm pendants, so I can appropriately note the firing temperatures.

Second; I want to do a series of farm-friendly words that are green powder on clear glass. Roxy let me try out two of her colors. The one on the left is Dense Green (RW 75) (also known as 'Medium Green Yellow on Colour Fusion) - I love it, but it's too limey for this specific intent. I really want to keep track of this color for later though! The color on the right was Celadon Green (G 135) - I suppose I underestimated how delicate the color was and didn't put nearly enough on, so you can barely even see it!

I'm glad Roxy let me test run her powder, because RW 75 was the exact color I was going to try for! The solid glass version looks just like my green farm sheet glass. Either that, or the label is wrong, I won't know for a long time haha.

Third; When I popped into the charging room one day I found a beautiful sheet of fused glass, one that Paul didn't like and was just going to chuck into the furnace. For Gaffers (our fundraising group at school), I cut up the glass and threw it into a kiln so we could make some neat, recycled pendants!

I should note that this glass was so thick from being fused together that I couldn't score and cut it - I ended up taking it to the wet saw and just slicing it up at random.

As you can see there's no holes in them yet. This is just after I pulled them out of the annealer so they were still warm.

The annealing schedule, unfortunately, is completely unusable! I didn't realize it for a long time, but I hadn't properly shut the door of the Large Paragon, so the kiln kept giving up at about 500 degrees and crashing back down. I thought the poor annealer was on it's last legs or something, and I kept changing the max temperature and sending it up and up and up (of course it wasn't actually going up). The last schedule I was on before figuring out my issue was;

Wed March 20 / Thur March 21, 2013
Large Paragon
1) AFAP ↑ 770° for 40 min

- and then I checked on the kiln and holy moly it was hot hot hot! Everything looked plenty melted so I just crashed that baby right down to 516° and ran it on a regular annealing cycle.

Unfortunately for me, the Large Paragon has crappy digitry, and many of the little lights are burnt out, so I don't know exactly what temperature it was at, or if it was at 770 and had been on hold for a little while.

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Slumping Fused Tree Bowl

The final step is to slump the forms! Unfortunately they really didn't turn out. I forgot to consider that the circumference of one circle doesn't necessarily match another haha. Next time!

To see this process from the beginning stages of fusing, click here.

Jan, 19, 2013
Kiln 1

1) 03 ↑ 120

2) 06 @ 120°

3) 12 ↑ 600°

4) 13 @ 600°

5) 13:01 ↑ 670°

6) 13:30 @ 670°

7) 13:31 ↓ 516°

8) 14:30 @ 516°

9) 16 ↓ 390°
10) 17 ↓50°

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Vent Tests For Slumping

These molds are extremely delicate after one firing, but since I am running tests I don't want to invest in a ceramic slip mold.

Some of the molds broke from picking them up the wrong way, so only two concave and one convex mold were fired.

They were successful, but in future molds my lip size has to be much larger to make full-size bowls.

November 5, 2012
Kiln 1
1) 02 hr ↑ 600º
2) 03 hr @ 600º
3) 3:01 ↑ 720º
4) 3:16 @ 720º
5) 3:17 ↓ 516º
6) 4:17 @ 516º
7) 4:18 ↓ 50º

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Adopting A Bottle Slumping Schedule For Flat Fuses

I decided I wanted to try and reclaim some of the recycled glass that was going to go into the casting furnace. I thought if I could flatten the glass I could reuse it somehow in bowls or other slumping projects.

These pieces came out rather wonky looking, and looked a lot more attractive with the white kiln paper stuck to the back then they did when it was washed off. They were flat, but my ability to judge how the glass would look match up when it was flat was really awful, meaning there were lots of gaps.
















November 10, 2012
The Italian
1) AFAP ↑ 1100º F (595º C) - H for 10 Min
2) AFAP ↑ 1300º F (705º C) - H for 20 Min
3) AFAP ↑ 1475º F (802º C) - H for 05 Min
4) AFAP ↓   959º F (515º C) - H for 60 Min

However I had to adjust for the fact that the Italian over fires by about 60º C. I decided to go down just 50º C to be safe. So my final schedule was;

1) AFAP ↑ 1050º F - H for 10 Min
2) AFAP ↑ 1250º F - H for 20 Min
3) AFAP ↑ 1425º F - H for 05 Min
4) AFAP ↓  909º F  - H for 60 Min

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First Attempt to Concave Slump

My first concave slumpings went awry because I forgot to account for trapped air in my molds. This is fixed by carving out tiny veins or drilling air holes through the mold.

The green rectangular glass was fused earlier in the week, you can see that here.

Concave Slumpings!

Soft glass: Yellow, Green/Blue
Recycled: Brown Flow

I successfully reused these molds with small vents carved out.

October 29, 2012
Kiln 4
1) 03 hr ↑ 120º
2) 06 hr @ 120º
3) 12 hr ↑ 600º
4) 13 hr @ 600º
5) 13:01 ↑ 720º
6) 13:21 @ 720º
7) 13:22 ↓ 516º
8) 14:22 @ 516º
9) 14:23 ↓ 50º

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First Slumping Test

The yellow and black glass is soft glass while the green and orange is random scrap.

1) 7 hr ↑ 685º (To evaporate water from fresh plaster molds)
2) 7:20 @ 685º
3) 7:21 ↓ 516º
4) 8:21 @ 516º
5) 10:21 ↓ 390º
6) 11:21 ↓ 50

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Schedule for Slumping & Firepolishing

1) 10 hrs @ 525º

2) Hold @ 525º

3) 10:01 hr ↑ 700º

4) 12 hr @ 700º

5) 12:01 hr ↓ 525º

6) 17 hr @ 525º

7) 25 hr @ 390º

8) 31 hr ↓ 50º

I was staring at this schedule with such confusion, thinking it was for bowls, and not knowing why I wrote 700. I finally got it, this is a good schedule I used for slumping and naturally firepolishing sand castings.

I really REALLY need to remember to label my schedules with what's in the kiln. Best intentions always go forgotten though.

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Slumping Gone Wrong

 

I spent an entire Saturday prepping glass and plaster/silica cores to be slumped into flowery vases / candle holders. I checked on them after an hour and found everything broken or knocked over.

The issue? I didn't think about drying out the plaster cores, so they shocked the glass. Otherwise it might have worked!

Kiln 5 Program
1) 3:10 ↑ 685º
2) 3:30 @ 685º
3) 3:31 ↓ 516º
4) 4:31 @ 516º
5) 6:31 ↓ 371º
6) 10:00 ↓ 50º

I put this glass into an Aperture Pour here!

Also check out what a successful slumping will look like!

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