Sometimes a girl just has to melt a whole bunch of glass. I’m working on samples for a possible project, so thought I’d give a quick run through of setting up and firing a bunch of pot melts. The end goal is 4 large pieces and 2 color samples. I’ll be casting 4 solid colors and 2 mixed colors.
This is the saucer for the bottom layer. I need to use this for two different colors, and keep them separate, so I’ll put in a kilnwashed divider made from a strip of old kiln shelf.
The two colors for this layer are lime green and cobalt blue. The lime green is cut into smallish pieces, and the cobalt blue is largish frit. The intended thickness of the casting is 3/8″.
The top layer has four smaller castings, a circle and square, both of which are 6″ wide, and two 4″ square tiles. The larger casting will be done in commercially available pots, the tiles in ceramic molds that I made myself. The two larger pieces will be forest green and yellow. The two smaller will be the mixed colors. Each of the smaller pots has 9 oz. of glass, 3 oz. of color, and 6 oz of clear. I then added an additional 1.5 oz of clear to compensate for the glass that will stick to the pot.
The pots have to have a larger hole made in the bottom, something around 3/4″ is the best. To keep my glass from falling out of the bottom, I put a large chunk of tempered glass over the hole first.
and then load the rest of the glass in.
Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of the before firing, so here is the post firing after using a basic potmelt casting schedule:
The top layer, all the pots drained nicely.
The bottom layer. Looks like I underestimated how much glass I needed for the blue side. Here’s a look at the glass without the pots in the way.
Here is a shot of the set up on the top shelf without pots.
And the final glass again, just because it’s awesome.
And yes, we will be talking about compatibility very soon.