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.
