Glass Synchronicity: October 2013

Monday, October 28, 2013

Slumpfest Project 1: Promising start, unwanted results

Glass picked out

To start off Erica Biery's class we had a bit of a warm up on the Morton portable glass system. I did learn that my kit is missing a number of newer items that make life a bit easier when cutting geometrical shapes. No worries, I had ordered the beetle bits system the week before. I can use either at this point.

The project was to be a salad bowl using some stamped glass that she and Jen Walkovich had prepared the day before. We were due to learn stamping later in the day.

So I picked out a couple stamped pieces and a matching glass that Spectrum Glass had kindly donated to the class and started cutting away. I just went ahead and did various sizes. The salad bowl project works as a mosaic analog. After cutting my pieces I cut a black border for my 12" X 12" glass and started to place my pieces on it upside down.

The reason to place everything upside down was that it would keep the stamped glass pieces looking a bit sharper. We were working at a hectic pace, everyone was sharing a cutting system and there were a lot of pieces to cut. As they said, "This isn't your masterpiece, its just to show the technique." Once I arranged everything as best as I could we tacked it down with some cheap hairspray in drops.

Next we took some fine black frit and filled in the empty spaces. This took a little work to make sure we didn't have any stray pieces where we didn't want them. Then to preserve it all we sprayed the hairspray over the whole piece.

I transported mine home to fuse. I had to fix a few areas that shifted, but it worked well enough. I did a full fuse, then flipped the piece and did another full fuse. I had some really nice results. I little spare frit where I didn't want it, but it was nice enough.

Then I did my slump fuse. I'd not slumped something with such sharp sides before so I thought I was doing a good thing adjusting my slump schedule. As you can see in the last picture, it slumpped itself down the sides of the mold. *Sigh*. I'm not sure if there is any saving grace here, but I may try to do a full fuse to flatten it and see what comes out of it. Here is the disastrous schedule I used.

My Schedule:

Segment	Ramp	Temp	Hold
1	200°	250°	15
2	250°	1050°	30
3	150°	1225°	15
4	400°	950°	60
5	200°	800°	10

I had based it off of a new slump schedule I saw published by spectrum:

Segment	Ramp	Temp	Hold
1	250°	250°	15
2	250°	1050°	30
3	150°	1225°	10
4	400°	950°	60
5	200°	800°	10
6	300°	100°	0

Next time I will go with what was my normal slump schedule, that I had gotten from Spectrum a while back.

Segment	Ramp	Temp	Hold
1	150°	300°	15
2	300°	1235°	15
3	AFAP	950°	60
4	150°	800°	10

All cut

Arraigned and tacked

Applying frit

Nice results after flip fuse

Rut Roh!

Sunday, October 27, 2013

Do you have any Hunny?

We have had 2 little girls visiting with us all the past week, ages 6 moths and 3 years. The 3 year old has a big stuffed Eeyore that she likes to sleep with. We also read pooh stories, and she loves when I sing the Tigger song. So Friday night, I decided I'd like to make a little project for them before they head home on Monday.

I used some blue glass and white iridized glass I had on hand to cut out a honey pot. I then cut a lid shape from the blue and a small handle for the lid from adventurine black. Luckily I had some black stringer on hand. I nipped off small pieces, stole my wife's tweezers and spelled out HUNNY in block letters. I dropped Bullseye GlasTac firing glue on it to keep it in place and left it to dry.

Saturday I added a piece of wire between 2 layers, so that it could be hung then I set it to contour fuse at 1400. It ended up a little more flat than I was going for, but the letters are still raised. Next time I will try a temperature closer to a tack, perhaps that will give me what I wanted. For a first run, I'm happy.

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

SlumpFest2103

Last weekend I had the opportunity to attend SlumpFest2013 held at Slumpy's in Belmont, NC. It was a hard drive down after work on Friday and then back home Sunday after having classes for the day. I had surgery for a hernia scheduled for Monday morning so I couldn't take an extra day to make it easier on me. The surgery went well and I'm recovering now.

Slumpy's is located in a 100 year old former textile building. It was absolutely huge! We got to be there for the ribbon cutting ceremony to the new showroom, which was nicely put together with many example pieces to look at.

I got to learn two main techniques, glass stamping and crackle glass. I will outline those processes in my next two blog posts. For now here are some highlights from the store.