WarmGlass.com

Check out SW Diamond: http://swdiamond.freeyellow.com/ I bought one of their diamond discs a few years ago, and run it on an old electric potters wheel. The set up works great. The discs come with a magnetic backing so you need to attach a heavy piece of steel to the top of the potters wheel, which ...

The reason I am raising the issue of annealing is that it is a quick mental jump from firing enamels on small pieces of 1/8" glass, to using a drop ring for a slump of slightly thicker glass, to firing huge panels still 1/8" or slightly thicker, perhaps in a kiln of your own design. Yet th...

You ignore proper annealing at your own risk. Normally you should hold the piece at the annealing temperature for at least 15 minutes, and more if the piece has any thickness. Then cool to the strain point slowly, before a more rapid cool to room temperature. The exact schedule would be based on sev...

Interesting thread. I am sure it works for firing paint onto 1/8" glass, however I doubt the usefullness on thicker pieces or on slumped work. My experience on annealing slumped work is that you have to take the thickness of the mold into consideration, not just the thickness of the glass. This...

Most glass would crack if heated that quickly. You might get away with heating small pierces of thin material, but I dont see how it could work on larger or thicker panels. Dont forget that if you paint on glass, the painted areas will absorb heat at a different rate than the clear, and each color w...

Does anybody try to sell glass directly from their website? Or is the website just used for promation, and as a reference for shops and galleries that order wholesale? And if you do try to sell directly off the website, do you use a "shopping cart", which seems somewhat awkard for an indiv...

I want to comment on the issue of why plaster/silica molds crack. It seems to me that a mold can only crack from internal stresses. In plaster/silica molds these stresses can only come from heating, and could generally come only from these causes: (1) Escaping moisture from a damp mold, or from the ...

Judi:

What types of glass do you generally cast with? And what surface finish do you get?

And how hot do you generally fire? There is some agreement that going over 1500 F is really hard on a mold.

Also, are the measurements by weight or volume?

Ellen:

Thanks for all the help.

I checked your website out. WOW!

If I get a successful casting, I will email you a picture along with a description of all the technical stuff I did.

Again, Thanks.

Marc: Thanks very much for all your help. I now know basically what I am going to try on my first attempt. One question. If I add 20% refractory cement, what should I expect in terms of the surface finish of the glass? I have a sandblaster, and could easily clean the casting up that way, but would p...

The annealing temperature is about 935 F, perhaps slightly higher for a casting. Fenton is basically just soda lime glass with a few added fluxes, but no lead. The kiln controller is separate. I realize that adding a castable cement would make the mold a lot tougher, but what happens after the casti...

I am planning to use a 50-50 mix of pottery plaster and silica for the mold, perhaps with some added fiberglass or ceramic fibre. It will be fired in a ceramic kiln with a ramp type controller. I was planning to use Fenton FHC cullet, but this could change. If I added cement to the plaster, what wou...

The skull sits on a short artificial neck (as real skulls have no neck), and this neck sits on a base that is 4 inches square and about 1.5 inches high. This base is the opening on the top of the mold where the glass will be dripped in from a flower pot. So a 4" by 4" area of glass will be...

Thanks for the advice. Yes some heads are larger than others. But the head I am casting is actually a full size human skull. Death is said to be the great leveller......... Anyway, I have got to the point of making waxes from a rubber mold that in turn was made from a model. We took some liberties w...

I am planning to kiln cast a solid object about the size of a human head. I would like advice on the thickness of the walls of the mold. I want something thick enough to hold the weight of the glass without cracking, but at the same time I want to keep the overall dimensions down, to have a reasonab...

Thanks for the information.

At some point, I would like to have a large mold made out of spun stainless steel. Does anyone know of a place in Canada, preferably Ontario, that will do this at a reasonable price?

I would appreciate feedback from anyone slumping into a wok. The wok I have is not stainless. Do you have problems with warpage, or scaling? What type of separator do you use? Does the wok deteriorate with multiple firings? Are there any other problems? Does anyone have experience with the boron nit...