Hello there, it’s been a while since we’ve had a Q & A Monday. Today I’m answering reader questions and sharing both the question and the answers with you. I’ve removed personal details for privacy reasons. Ready? Grab some coffee and let’s get started!
Q: Do you have a firing schedule for tempered glass?
A: Tempered glass is float glass that has been cooled quickly to introduce internal stress. You can treat it the same way as untempered float glass and use any of the firing schedules on the Recycled Glass Firing Schedules page.
Q: I’m happy to take to you. your idea about tracing the bottles is great, I loved it. I am doing all kind of creation with the bottles, but mostly they break, in the kiln or latter. how to prevent that?.
A: There are a few reasons that your bottle creations could be breaking.
– If you are melting two bottles together, they are probably not compatible and will break
– If your bottles are breaking in the kiln, you may be heating or cooling too quickly
– If your bottles are breaking later, you may not be annealing correctly.
I would try using some of these ideas:
– Do not mix bottles when you fuse. (More about that on the website this week)
– Slow down your firing schedule so you are heating and cooling more slowly
– increase your annealing time
If you’d like to send me some photos of the broken creations, I may have more suggestions.
Q: Hi, so I decided to buy the Covington grinder from His glassworks. I went to Asheville last week and spent a few hours on the equipment, so I could learn how to use it. The grinder is incredible, although there is definitely a learning curve. I think I need a compressor now because I will dry something off and think it’s perfect, and then look at a few hours later and notice a chip I hadn’t seen. Now I have a question about the tile saw, I was trying to cut a half-gallon bourbon bottle, that is larger than 3 1/2 inch diameter. With the Chicago electric saw, is it possible to raise the saw blade and cut into a bottle that is too large to push through the regular way? I really don’t want to buy another Saw like the 14 inch kind, but would like to make bowls out of these larger bottles. I think it is called a plunge cut.I have reread the manual and messed with all the knobs, but I can’t figure it out. Thank you for all of your help and advice, I will send you some updated pictures soon.
A: The grinders are incredible, and yes, there is a learning curve, I’ve had a few things that caught on the surface and went flying! You can lift the whole saw up so the blade doesn’t touch the platform, but you will still only have about 4″ of saw blade to work with. I prefer to leave the saw down, push the platform with the large bottle toward the blade until it can’t go any further, back up, turn the bottle over, making sure that the cut mark aligns with the blade and cut through the other side. With a very little practice, you can easily cut the bottoms off larger bottles. The key piece is making sure that the second cut lines up with the first.
I can’t wait to see what you come up with, it sounds like you are well on your way to production!
Well, that’s it for today, thanks for reading, and writing in, of course!
