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Pot Melts with Recycled Glass

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finished casting on top layerSometimes 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.

kiln washed trayThis 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.

preparing to fire glassThe 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.

pot melt with recycled glassand then load the rest of the glass in.

recycled glass ready to cast

 

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of the before firing, so here is the post firing after using a basic potmelt casting schedule:

drained potsThe top layer, all the pots drained nicely.

melted glass on lower layerThe 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.

lime and blue potmeltsHere is a shot of the set up on the top shelf without pots.

pot melt set upAnd the final glass again, just because it’s awesome.

And yes, we will be talking about compatibility very soon.






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Sjones 7 pts

I have to say I am impressed. I have always been a huge fan of pot melts and screen melts but have not had good luck when using bottle glass. I have used a pot melt s heddle I found in a book with less than favorable results. In light of your posting I will have to give it another try.

JaneOdom 5 pts

How can you mix the glass colors? Aren't they uncombatible?

GlassWithaPast 5 pts moderator

 JaneOdom Hi Jane;  the short answer is sometimes they are incompatible and sometimes they aren't.  The longer answer is:  when you have glasses with very similar CoE's, in small pieces, you can melt them into a new piece of glass with a unique CoE.  Boyce Lundstrom first talked about this in his wonderful book "Glass Casting and Moldmaking".  Since then, industrial glass manufacturing has become very homogenized, opening doors for experimentation.

fxblf 5 pts

This is so incredibly cool! Can we see pics of what the pot melts looked like outside of their respective "catcher" pots?  It's hard to see how the colors melted.

GlassWithaPast 5 pts moderator

 fxblf I do have pictures of the glass out of the saucers, I will add them to the post in the next couple days.  Thanks!

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