Glass With A Past

Q & A Monday – 5/6/13

Jodi McRaney Rusho — Mon, 06 May 2013 15:12:13 +0000

And we’re back with more questions from readers for Q & A Monday. Today’s questions are all about working with crushed recycled glass, or frit. I’ve left out the personal details for privacy, so if one of these questions is yours and you’d like attribution and a back link, please let me know. If you have a burning (melting?) glass question, send it on over. I may even have an answer for you.

Q: I have a kiln that I have been playing and experimenting with for months now. I adore wine bottle glass, and have had complications casting melted wine bottle frit that I make. From research I have done, and some of my experimenting, I have found that wine bottle glass is difficult to cast unless fired at very high temps. Even then, I have had to do a lot of cold working with the pieces I have tried to make after firing. I love to try and make little jewelry pieces out of the frit. Do you have any suggestions for working with wine bottle frit, including firing schedules at all? Thank you so much!
A: Frit is a little complicated. The smaller the pieces, the more heat is required, so yes, they do require high temperatures. Then, ad in small jewelry molds, which are a small volume of glass and it gets even more tricky.That being said, the easiest thing is to use small ~1/4″ frit pieces and try this firing schedule:300/hr to 1100 hold 10 (this stop makes sure your mold and glass are all the same temperature)
300/hr to 1650 hold 20
9999 to 1020 hold 10 (annealing stop)
200/hr to 750 then off

The annealing is probably conservative, and with jewelry pieces, a natural cooling cycle is probably annealing enough, but I’m kinda careful about that stuff. This is the schedule I use when I’m making panels with wine bottle frit, or using jewelry molds. I do still have to cold work, but I usually do that on a tile saw or grinder and then fire polish the pieces.

What we are doing here is heating the frit chunks slowly enough and holding at a temperature where they will melt, but not so high that they devitrification process is accelerated.

If you are using smaller (like sugar) frit, then the process is more similar to pate de verre.

I will try and do some more conclusive testing my self, particularly as this is a question I’ve also been working on for a long time, it would be good to get it nailed down.

Q: I love your site and your work. I’ve been fusing recycled glass for a few years now (mostly just slumped bottles) and have been having problems getting bottle “frit” to full fuse in a mold. I’ve used your firing schedule most recently and the pieces are still not smooth and shiny. Most still have a pebble texture. Should I raise the target temp or hold the ramp longer?
A: Yes, you’ll have to raise the target temp and increase the hold. I’ve had good luck with 1750-1825 range, depending on the frit size. Hold for 10-12 minutes. Since the jewelry pieces are small, you can decrease the annealing time if you wish.

Q: Hi Jodi. I recently bought new running pliers, same art kind and they were good until the silicone or rubber or whatever that covers the ends started breaking down. Now they break off a bit under on one side. But the question I have is about Fusing temps. I have been trying to fully fuse broken bits of the same bottle so that the glass flows to an even surface. I have something in the kiln right now, 2nd try that is set for 1625 F for 10 minutes. Last try was 1600 for 5 minutes. I have been using a Fast program to find out the top temp, but have recently read that air pockets insulate and thats why you need a slow Ramp? would this help? For this experiment I used three sizes of the glass, laying out the biggest ones first then the med. then the smallest. Can you actually get it to flatten out? Oh I am putting the glass on fire paper with a 6×6 square fiber board frame around it.
There are a couple of things I would try here. The ramp speed is probably contributing. Not necessarily because of air pockets, but because you are speeding right through the transition zone which means the glass doesn’t have a chance to equalize out in temperature. That means the outside of the glass will crystallize before the inside of the glass melts.You don’t mention how fast the ‘fast’ ramp is, ideally, I like to go around 300/hr, although you can go as fast as 500/hr with good results.I think your top temperature is too high for the broken pieces of glass. The smaller the pieces, the more heat it takes to fuse them, but what your doing won’t take that much heat.
I would go to 1550 or 1575 and hold for 15 minutes.

Also, keep in mind, some bottles just won’t melt smoothly into a sheet. I typically have trouble with the celery green ones and some clear ones. Darker colors melt more smoothly.If you’d like to send me a photo, I may have other suggestions. I too had running pliers that the rubber came off. Hate that! I ‘fixed’ it by taping on rubber drawer liner, but it wasn’t a great permanent solution. I’ve wondered about the rubber tool dip that you can use for plier handles.

Kiln Carving Pattern April 2013

Jodi McRaney Rusho — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 15:37:04 +0000

Free Kiln Carving Pattern for April

It may not look like it from the picture, but it has been a pretty rainy April so far here in Utah. Even the ducks are tired of the rain. This cute ducky kiln carving pattern brightens things up though. Who doesn’t love ducklings?

Step 1 – Download the free pattern using the button at the bottom of the page (no credit card required) and print it out.

Step 2 – Cut a piece of fiber paper large enough to accommodate the pattern and whatever border you want to include. I’ve left the border off completely, but you may do as you wish. There are handy dandy dots to show you where to pin the pattern. I like to pin mine to a piece of cardboard so I have a safe cutting surface.

Step 3. Carefully! Cut out the gray areas with a razor knife and remove them. Make sure you cut through the paper AND the fiber paper. Be especially careful with the ribs of the umbrella and the ducky eyes.

Step 4. Place the fiber paper in the kiln on a prepared shelf and place your glass over it. If you need help figuring out if your bottle glass will cover it, there is a quick way to measure.

Step 5. Fuse using a full fuse schedule.

Step 6. Finish the project. At this point, you could either grind the edges of the piece and then slump it, or, drill the corners for use as a suncatcher. I’ve chosen to drill mine and wired it with cheery red wire.

Use the button below to download your free ducky kiln carving pattern! (no credit card required)

Q & A Monday – 4/22/2013

Jodi McRaney Rusho — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 15:49:48 +0000

Welcome to Q & A Monday! Where we answer reader questions about all things recycled glass. I’ve removed personal details for privacy reasons, if one of these questions was yours and you’d like attribution, let me know. If you have a question, send it over!

Q: Hi Jodi

Thank you for your newsletter, it is great and very inspirational.

Do you use a template when carving the glass? How do you put the design onto the glass for carving as the glass is continuously wet?
A: that is a very good question. I’m assuming that we are talking about carving with a dremel tool and diamond bits vs. kiln carving. So, I’ve tried these things:drawing on the pattern with sharpie and then coating it with chapstick or lipgloss. Works okaybuying a ‘professional’ Sharpie marker, the solvent is different, so it supposedly stays on wet, oily or dusty surfaces. Works pretty darn well.wax glass marking pencil. NopeI’ve just purchased some oil based paint pens that are supposed to be indestructible, but haven’t had time to try them.When I’ve done a lot of repetitive carving, I’ve printed the template out on my laser printer on plastic film and put it under the glass. Because it’s plastic, it doesn’t deteriorate in water and I can see what I’m carving. I did a large order of several hundred candy dishes that way.I could see that working with a sharpie drawing on plastic film as well. The plastic will hold the ink better than the glass will.
Conclusions:

for one off templates, use a professional grade Sharpie or oil paint pen
for multiple carvings, use a plastic film template under the glass.

Hope that helps!

Q: Good Morning! Thanks for the email/newsletter. I have a question on tools. What’s the best bottle cutter you can recommend? Needs to fit up to 750ml. And, what’s the best way to make1-2 inch holes in fused bottle glass. I’m using a hand drill with a diamond/glass hole bit and some water…really hard to control and not too safe!
A: I use a tile saw to cut bottles with now. I bought Ephraims bottle cutter way back when, but it was kinda cheesy. I quickly moved to scoring bottles freehand with my glass cutter and shocking them with a torch. Then moved to my tile saw and that’s how I cut everything now.If it were me making 1-2″ holes, I would use a hole saw, with a drill press. There are some very inexpensive drill presses (Harbor Freight) and it is a very handy tool. It’s great for making lot’s of little holes too. I put a board on the drill press platform, with a pan with water, and then I clamp all three things together so they won’t move. Then put the glass in the pan with a bit of foam underneath so I don’t drill the pan. Make sure you match the speed of the drill press with the recommended speed of the hole bit. (Usually it’s easy to change, just open the top of the drill press)Good luck! Let me know if you need photos of the drill press set up, that may not be very clear just from a description.

Q: Read on your site how you can mix recyclded glass as long as the particle size is small. Would love to know more about this and any other metods for mixing recycled glass from various sources.
A: You can mix recycled glass in two ways:- grind all the particles down to small pieces, pack a mold and fire. This will give you a very stone like appearance. The small size of the particles will negate the Coefficient of Expansion (CoE) and compatibility issues. Basically by making the surface area of each piece so small that if two particles pull apart, it has no effect on the overall structure.- mix the pieces at a high temperature and essentially create a new piece of glass. This works best for glass with similar CoE’s, bottle and window for example. A pot melt is a good way to do this. Keep in mind that your new piece of glass will have a CoE unique unto itself, and will not be compatible with any other pieces of glass. (I’m sure there are exceptions, this is a guideline, not a cast iron rule) Also keep in mind that this is an experimental process. You may get great results once and then many failures in a row.

Q & A Monday, 4/15/13

Jodi — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 16:39:50 +0000

Here we are again at another Q & A Monday. Today is all about questions from facebook fans. If you haven’t liked the Glass With a Past page on facebook, you may want to. The updates are shorter and more frequent, and there are often comments from other glass-o-philes with valuable information. Once again, I have omitted personal details for privacy, if one of these questions is yours and you would like attribution and a track back, let me know!

Q: A very good friend sent me several bottles from the naval academy where our husbands went to school prior to flight training. The bottles all have enamel on them and she has asked me to make a couple bowls out of them. I have cut the bottles into rings and would like to know if you might know a temperature they could share that would fuse the rings to stick together and not burn off the enamel. If you dont know, how about a starting point to test the glass ? What schedule do you use when you have enamel on glass you want to slump? TY~~
A: Hi, that’s a tough one. The enamel will stay on at slumping temperatures (1350-1385 F), but the color burns off and the enamel will be white. You can use a colored rub’n'buff to restore the color, but it won’t be food safe.A full fuse burns the enamel pretty much off. You can still see a ghost of the enamel if the light is just right.So, that said, I would try a slumping temperature and hold for a good bit, like maybe 8 minutes or so. That should give you a good strong tack fuse and hopefully keep the enamel.
Testing is, of course, always an excellent idea!

Would love to see how they turn out. Here’s a link to my full firing schedules: http://glasswithapast.com/recycled-glass-firing-schedules/
Q: Have you ever used a garbage disposal to make frit?
A: Oh yes indeedy! Meet Chewy, the frit maker: I’ve been using this since 2008, and have run through four or five disposals. One disposal will grind several buckets of frit before it wears out. Usually, the motor is fine, it is the crusher plate and the sidewalls that wear out. A newer disposal grinds a higher percentage of very fine frit, as it wears, the frit sizes get larger. After I grind the frit, I have a dedicated small sandblast cabinet that I use only for filtering frit, I keep the dust down by attaching a shop vac to the cabinet with a water trap.

Non Traditional Molds for Slumping

Jodi — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 16:38:10 +0000

Wouldn’t it be great if you could use any cool thing you find for slumping? Well, maybe not everything, but there are lots of things that CAN be used for slumping, as long as they are prepared correctly. Let’s look at a few examples and consider what we would have to do to successfully use them for slumping.

Commercially made terra cotta

Terra Cotta pots are a very useful thing indeed, they can be used for pot melts, as well as floral formers in a pinch. Since glass contracts more than ceramic as it cools, it’s best to cover pots with fiber paper before using them as floral formers, the fiber paper gives a bit of squeeze room to the glass so it doesn’t break as it cools.

Terra cotta saucers can be used as slump molds with a good coat of kiln wash. If you feel the need to drill holes in it, use a masonry bit and make sure you follow standard safety rules in regards to dust.

Commercially made stainless steel -

Most stainless steel items are marked on the bottom, but not always. Some things to look out for with unidentified metal items:

Take a magnet with you, stainless is not attracted to magnets, if your item does stick to a magnet, it could be chromed or plated steel.

Stainless is typically thinner than aluminum, or pewter. If your item is quite thick, and not so heavy, probably not stainless.

Aluminum and pewter are both pretty soft metals, if you can, try a discreet scratch test to see if the metal scratches. Naturally, it’s best to buy the item before you do this.

Consider the price. Are you willing to do a test on a $1.00 piece? Just in case it really is stainless? Sometimes, it can be worth while to gamble if the price is right. And always test with scrap glass.

I frequently see incomplete cocktail shakers at the thrift store. This one is just $1.00, what a great price for a full size floral former. Rough up the surface with sandpaper and coat well with kilnwash or boron nitride spray.

Here is a sweet little stainless bowl that will make a great slumping mold for candy dishes. Again, rough up the surface and coat with kilnwash or boron nitride spray.

Commercially made dishes

Here is a selection of dishes from the thrift store. These can all be used as slumping molds, as long as they are prepared correctly. To use glazed pottery as a slumping mold, you must either

a. coat well with boron nitride spray, which can go right over the glaze OR

b. sandblast off the glaze and kilnwash the mold.

Again, if you want holes, use a masonry bit and follow safety rules!

If you don’t do one of these two things, your glass will fuse to the glaze and it will be a big mess. A big cracked, broken mess.

Commercially produced Bisque ware

If you aren’t already friends with your local ceramics store, you should be. Most ceramic supply stores carry a line of pre-made bisque ware at extremely good prices. These pieces are intended for ceramic hobbyists to glaze and fire. They can be used very successfully as slump molds, needing nothing but kilnwash. If you feel the need to drill holes in the mold, use a masonry bit, and follow dust safety guidelines.

Another option, although it is slightly more expensive, is to visit the local Color Me Mine or other ‘paint your own’ pottery chain. These stores are intended for drop in painting of ceramics by non-ceramic artist hobbyists. They have a different range of bisque ware, which they will happily sell to you.

And, last but not least, I recommend this type of boron nitride spray:

Which is available at Fusion Headquarters.

Q & A Monday, 4/8/2013

Jodi — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 17:17:18 +0000

Wow, time flies, here we are in April already. I spent last week participating in a grueling Fine Art show called Art & Soup. I was able to show and get lots of good feedback on a new series of recycled pate de verre panels, which I’ll be sharing in the next weeks. But, for now, onward to the Questions and Answers! These are all reader questions that I am reposting here in case anyone else has the same questions. Reader details have been omitted for privacy. If you submitted one of these questions and want attribution and a back link, please let me know.

Q: I just got a kiln, I carefully researched and researched and finally bought one, a small one for glass 8×8, figured it would be a good beginners kiln. It comes with a digital pyrometer. When I was shopping around and contacting numerous kiln outlets, one of the places told me I needed to have a device for controlling temperatures. But they were at least $200 more. They warned me if I didn’t get one of these I would “have to babysit the kiln.” Well, I thought, so? I have to babysit the dishwasher or else it overflows, there’s a lot of things in my life I have to babysit, what’s one more thing? I finally found your website because using recycled glass is the goal and I’ve been saving bottles and jars and broken dishes for almost a year while I saved up for my kiln. So I get my kiln and I’m reading your information and I was, to put it mildly, shocked!! I’m figuring out how to read the ramp time information and looking at two of your ramp times one was 13.5 hours and one was 22.5 hours. Maybe I’m still not reading these right, but still, I thought babysitting would be and hour or 2 or 3. As I work full time I have maybe 2 hours at night and then the weekends I’m out running to complete errands or other events and having to be home monitoring the kiln for 12+ hours is not possible. So my kiln sits by the box it came in, unused, for almost 3 week nows. I figure there’s 2 solutions. (well, maybe 3, if one of them is that I’m totally not reading the ramp info properly) 1. Find projects that will only need to be fired for a few hours. 2. Bite the proverbial bullet and buy a controller unit. http://www.skutt.com/glass/products/GM-2LTcontroller.php That’s another $400. Or I could try and find a used kiln that has a controller. That of course could take forever. Man!! live and learn. Do you have any suggestions regarding Solution #1 (projects with a short fire time) or any of the rest? Thank you so much. I love your site!! I’m completely inspired.

A: You did figure the firing schedule times out, they do typically take 12-18+ hours. The slow ramp up is to keep the glass from thermal shocking, and the slow ramp down is a part of the annealing process, and is pretty important. HOWEVER. The smaller the piece of glass, the more stable it is (try breaking a 1/4″ square piece, it takes a hammer) so it should be entirely possible for you to fire, say, jewelry pieces with an accelerated ramp up, and then skip most of the ramp down, just turn off the kiln and let it cool. I say ‘theoretically’ because I haven’t tried it yet. Based on my experience though, it should work. I also just picked up a tiny (6 x 6″) kiln with a pyrometer but no controller, so we can learn together. I would start with this firing schedule and see what happens:
500/hr to 1550, hold 6
9999 to 1040 hold 20
off to room temperature
I’m willing to bet this will process will take some experimentation, so take very good notes because it will save you time in the long run. The good news is, after not very long, you will know everything there is to know about your kiln. Don’t be discouraged, anything is possible, we just may not have discovered it yet! You may be able to compress the firing schedule more, I would do a test and if it turns out, speed up to 525 and do it again. This will probably work best if your pieces are around an inch square. Also, not all bottles melt the same, so try a couple different colors and see if one works better than others.

Q: I saw your post on epic kiln carving and I have a question. I have wanted to try something like this for a while, but have been freaked out about it. Well, I am going to try now. My question is: when you did your crane design, did you put the same fiber paper under the design too- like a bed of that then the layers on top? or did you build your layers on the kiln shelf? would a piece of thinfire shelf paper work instead under it? I would like to know before I fire- I have my design all cut out already- very excited! its smallish- 8 x 10 to start.

A: That’s an excellent question. Because I was using the big kiln, I couldn’t take out the shelf and build the pattern right on it, and leaning over into a kiln for a long time isn’t my idea of fun.I used a piece of thinfire to build the whole fiber paper design on, then lifted up the thinfire and transferred the whole thing to the kiln (a few things slid, but not many) before I put the glass on.

Q:Thank you for your newsletter, it is great and very inspirational. Do you use a template when carving the glass? How do you put the design onto the glass for carving as the glass is continuously wet?

A: that is a very good question. I’m assuming that we are talking about carving with a dremel tool and diamond bits vs. kiln carving. So, I’ve tried these things:drawing on the pattern with sharpie and then coating it with chapstick or lipgloss. Works okay
buying a ‘professional’ Sharpie marker, the solvent is different, so it supposedly stays on wet, oily or dusty surfaces. Works pretty darn well.

wax glass marking pencil. Nope

I’ve just purchased some oil based paint pens that are supposed to be indestructible, but haven’t had time to try them.

When I’ve done a lot of repetitive carving, I’ve printed the template out on my laser printer on plastic film and put it under the glass. Because it’s plastic, it doesn’t deteriorate in water and I can see what I’m carving. I did a large order of several hundred candy dishes that way.

I could see that working with a sharpie drawing on plastic film as well. The plastic will hold the ink better than the glass will.

Conclusions:

for one off templates, use a professional grade Sharpie or oil paint pen
for multiple carvings, use a plastic film template under the glass.

Using Glass Powders with Texture Tiles

Jodi — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 15:20:58 +0000

Once you’ve mastered the art of making your own texture tiles, you can bump things up by adding frits and powders to your design. Armstrong Glass makes a line of float glass compatible frits and powders called Float Fire that work very well with recycled glass.

Start with your frits:

Here I have Deer Brown, Amber and Bright Black. Make sure you follow the safety guidelines on the Float Fire packaging. You’ll also need a texture tile (make sure you kiln wash it!):

You’ll need to decide at the start if you will be viewing the final project from through the capping glass, or if you will be flipping it over to view the frit side as the finished side. This will affect how you ‘build’ the frit on the tile. I will be viewing THROUGH the capping glass. So, I’ll build my design from the background to the details.

First, the amber for the chests and bellies. I’m using a fairly loose hand, but you could use a powder sifter and get very fine detail if that’s the way you roll.

Amber Float Fire on Texture Tile

Next will be the deer brown and black for the wing and neck feathers. I also cheated and added some yellow for beaks. Artistic allowance is definitely allowed!

Now, clean up around the edges of the design with a small soft brush so the back ground of the tile is nice and clean.

Now cut a piece of clear capping glass from your handy stash of recycled window glass.

And fire to a full fuse:

Things to remember:

frit and powder colors get much more vibrant after firing. If you aren’t sure of your final colors, do a reference firing test!
frits and powders lose a lot of volume, it may seem like you are really piling it on, but the final result may not be as thick as you expected.
practice! This is all an experiment, remember? Roll with it and have fun. I do new things an average of 15-16 times before I’m satisfied with the result, hopefully you all learn more quickly than I do!

Q & A Monday – March 25, 2013

Jodi — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 19:57:48 +0000

The great thing about Q & A Monday is I have to do it on MONDAY. If it were just called Q & A then I would put it off and we would never get to the questions and answers! These questions are from readers and the answers that I sent back to them. They are offered here as an informational resource, and maybe, if you have a question of your own, you’ll be inspired to ask (don’t be shy). I’ve removed personal details for privacy, if you asked a question and want attribution and a back link, let me know.

Q: I have a kiln that I have been playing and experimenting with for months now. I adore wine bottle glass, and have had complications casting melted wine bottle frit that I make. From research I have done, and some of my experimenting, I have found that wine bottle glass is difficult to cast unless fired at very high temps. Even then, I have had to do a lot of cold working with the pieces I have tried to make after firing. I love to try and make little jewelry pieces out of the frit. Do you have any suggestions for working with wine bottle frit, including firing schedules at all? Thank you so much!

A: Frit is a little complicated. The smaller the pieces, the more heat is required, so yes, they do require high temperatures. Then, ad in small jewelry molds, which are a small volume of glass and it gets even more tricky.
That being said, the easiest thing is to use small ~1/4″ frit pieces and try this firing schedule:

300/hr to 1100 hold 10 (this stop makes sure your mold and glass are all the same temperature) 300/hr to 1650 hold 20
9999 to 1020 hold 10 (annealing stop)
200/hr to 750 then off

The annealing is probably conservative, and with jewelry pieces, a natural cooling cycle is probably annealing enough, but I’m kinda careful about that stuff. This is the schedule I use when I’m making panels with wine bottle frit, or using jewelry molds. I do still have to cold work, but I usually do that on a tile saw or grinder and then fire polish the pieces.

What we are doing here is heating the frit chunks slowly enough and holding at a temperature where they will melt, but not so high that they devitrification process is accelerated.

If you are using smaller (like sugar) frit, then the process is more similar to pate de verre.

I will try and do some more conclusive testing my self, particularly as this is a question I’ve also been working on for a long time, it would be good to get it nailed down. Can you let me know how this works out for you? Photo’s would be great, then I can help with further suggestions. Don’t give up! We can figure it out, it just takes time.

Q: I don’t know if you covered this already or not but do you flatten a bottle first and then slump it in the mold? Or can you just put the whole bottle on a mold and let it flatten and slump at the same time? I have an Evenheat Set Pro kiln that I use for glass fusing and goes up to 1650 degrees F. Thanks in advance for your answer.

A: I have only flattened the bottle first and then put it in a mold, except when I’m using texture tiles, then I flatten the bottle right onto the tile. It seems like it should work, I’m just wondering about how the bottle will fold down into the mold, if it will gob up or not.
I have a fusing batch going in tomorrow, AND a handy bottle dish mold, I’ll give it a try and let you know what happens. …And, here’s what happened:

Bottle on the mold, fired with a slump firing schedule.

Here’s the bottle after:

You can see that it did gloop down a bit. The glass also dragged some kilnwash off the side of the mold. Here it is out of the mold:

Q: I am sure you are busy, but I wanted to find out if you received my message and question. I was wondering how you get your lines so straight in the you glass etching pieces as shown on your “Creating Texture – Carving” page. I am just getting into etching and can’t images lines that straight!

A: Yep, I did see it, been working my way down the e-mails this morning. It helps me to draw a line either on the glass or on the back of the glass where I want the engraved line to be. I use a flex shaft with my dremel, so that helps with the hand fatigue thing. I use a water feed made of tiny surgical tubing and…I practiced a LOT. You could try clamping a straight edge on your glass (I’d actually shim it up a bit so the shaft of your diamond tool touches it rather than the diamond part) and engrave along that. I’ll add that to the list of tutorials, it could be quite interesting to figure out. Also, I’ve noticed that holding my diamond bit at an angle as I carve reduces the tendency for spin out. I’m working on a whole new set of pieces that are carved, I’ll be interested to see what you think of them. Good luck and give the practicing on some scrap a try, you’ll get the hang of it quickly!

Student Group Project – Arts Academy

Jodi — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 18:57:08 +0000

Recently, I had the opportunity to work with students at the Arts Academy to create some unique fused art glass mosaics projects for the school annual fundraiser.

As the class is studying the Renaissance at this time, the teacher Susie Mizerak led the students through a search process to identify paintings that we could then reproduce as a mosaic. After the class selected several, the students voted on their favorites and the game was on.

The paintings that the students selected were Detail of a Landscape, 1471-1474, by Giovanni Bellini, :

and the detail of a figure from the painting “Tobias and the Angel” by Verrocchio and Leonardo

The process was fairly straight forward, although a tad bit labor intensive.

First, I cut up around 25 pounds of fusible art glass (in this case system 90) into smaller than 1/4″ squares, separated by color.

Then the students were divided into 6 teams of 4-5 students each and given a piece of the painting to reproduce. The painting pieces were taped to the back of a clear piece of fusible glass. The students selected colors and glued them on top of the clear glass in an effort to reproduce the painting as closely as possible. The grid is intended to be used as a guide, and is a clear piece of plastic sandwiched between the painting and the bottom of the glass.

After all of the individual parts of the portrait were finished, they were assembled on top of a sheet of fusible glass. The seams between the squares had to be filled and some color continuity was adjusted in adjacent squares.

Fine black frit was then brushed over the entire piece to fill in the gaps between squares and then the entire piece was fired according to the glass manufacturers recommendations.

Here is the final piece after a custom made walnut frame is added. The frame has hangers on the top corners so the piece can be hung in front of a window, or an a wall. The final size of this piece is about 18″ x 24″.

The second class did a similar project with the Bellini painting, also about 18″ x 24″:

Overall, an interesting experience for the teachers AND the students. These pieces will be on view at the Arts Academy Gala later this spring.

Q & A Monday – March 18, 2013

Jodi — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 17:33:37 +0000

Here we are at another Question and Answer Monday. These are reader questions, which I thought may also be useful for everyone. If you have a question, send it over. (I’ve removed personal details for privacy reasons, if you submitted a question and would like attribution and a back link, let me know!)

Wow! Last week’s Tech Tip was extremely popular, the number one question last week was:

Q: Where do I find Boron Nitride Spray?

A: Sorry about that, I should have included it in the newsletter! Fusion Headquarters has the lowest price I’ve seen. And the Reynolds are good people.

Q: Can I use regular kiln wash on found ceramic molds?
A: You can if you sandblast off the glaze first. If you don’t want to sandblast, or don’t have access to a sandblaster, you can use the Mold Release pictured above right over the top of the glaze.

Q: We recently acquired a wet tile saw and want to use it to cut glass wine/liquor/beer bottles into uniform tiles for a kitchen backsplash. It came with a 10″ continuous rim diamond blade. It cuts tile very well. Our results of cutting bottles are as follows:
1) thin walled wine bottle chipped/fractured
2) medium walled wine bottle cut fairly well until last 3/8″ which cracked and left jagged protrusion
3) thick walled champaign bottle cut through very well with only minor roughness
4) pre-scoring by rotating the bottle before pushing it through the blade might have helped but there were too many other variables to state a definite result. Rapidity of the it seemed to make little difference in the result of any of the above cuts.We viewed a few you tube videos online before attempting this experiment. Since our results were disappointing we are seeking your guidance.
1) are there special blades you would recommend for bottles?
2) are there any tricks of the trade for cutting stops from bottles for backsplash tiles? The thick champagne bottle was the only one we successfully cut strips from.
3) what material would you recommend we make a bean bag out of to support the bottle necks to eliminate movement throughout the cut?

Our goal is to have multi-colored 1″x2″ tiles.
A: You’re on the right track, some of it is just going to come down to practice. Here are a few things though:
a blade that is specifically for cutting glass tile will give you smoother cuts.

Not all bottles are created equally. Typically, cheap booze comes in cheap bottles. The thin walled bottles are really hard to cut because they are so thin.

I’m not clear if your saw is a table saw style, it seems so, if that’s the case, I would suggest rolling the bottle toward the blade as you cut. Also, I’ve found it works much better to cut with just the forward edge of the blade, rather than pushing the whole bottle through. This also seems to prevent the jagged protrusion problem.

Slower does work better, it will give you less chipping

you can also use the flat part of the diamond strip of the saw to smooth out the edges of your smaller pieces.

If I were cutting your tiles, I would mark a 2″ line away from the blade (from the side), cut the bottom off the bottle and then cut 2″ rings. The rings can then be easily cut with a glass cutter or cut with the saw.

Since I roll the bottles, I don’t have any ideas about a bean bag. Although, a very heavy duty plastic baggie full of sand should do the trick.