WarmGlass.com

Did I poke beehive :-) The kiln is a man's best friend - before the dog. We all love ours, and defend it. My apologies for the wrong estimate of precision. From now on I trust my thermocoupe to give the temperature of the thermocouple. The temp of the air is crucial at low temps. At the upper range ...

With a cutter.
The devit layer is about 1 mm thick between clears.

Now I got a grinding tool. Wonder how it looks if I
polish away the outer devit layers

-lauri

Sean wrote in another thread: ". I'm positive the glass is being fired at the temp. the controller is reading. How accurate are the controllers really? I trust it to give pretty much the same reading at the same temperature. If I remember right the thermocoule came with 10% accuracy. Over a 800...

I once slumped a clear wine bottle flat.
Then I cut a slice of this fused two layer glass
and refired.
The result was strong white devit on all surfaces
top, bottom and *in between.*

I guess that the bottle was not properly washed
to begin with, but I still wonder the
devit inside.

-lauri

Quote: Yes, that's what I do. Works fine, but man do you get wet! I do it outside. For really big pieces I use one of those cheap blue swimming pools for deprived children without real pools. Jackie Doing it outside? It is -18 Centigrades there. One need two parts of antifreeze to one part of water....

Camaro,

if you need instruction in the physical process of
making a mold, try to find
Andrew Werby's alt.sculpture FAQ.

http://users.lanminds.com/~drewid/

making a mold for glass differs only in materials.

-lauri

Oops,
the cuurent URL is
http://users.lmi.net/~drewid/altsculpture_faqs.html

Geri gave a good description of the procedure.
To make things easier, your "victim" might have
an old T-shirt over the vaseline as a further protection.
It also makes it easier to hang on the plaster bandage.

If you need it around the neck, make it in two parts

-lauri

Charles Brad's Dictionary of glass
mentions Ciment Fondu - that is alumina cement - and Secar
as materials for glass blowing molds. Those are
prefired to 900 C before use.

No personal experience with them.

-lauri

Amy,

I think we have someone with a waterjet system. Ask him.
Is sandblasting an option?

-lauri

In addition to hand pads, I bought a set of 4" Tellum
velcro disks for an angular grinder. They range from 60 to 8000 grit.

Sometimes I use them as handpads, too. They are more
flexible than the sponge.
-lauri

When I got my kiln 20 months ago I started a kiln diary. Slowly learning what to record. Another tool is an Excel sheet of temps. Every day when I read this NG, I have this sheet at hands. Whenever whoever tells something about temps, Iadd it to the sheet, with a link to the board. Ai present it has...

Charlie, To be precise, the reflection is not polarized, but the light that has polarity perpendicular to the reflecting surface is reflected more than the light with parallel polarization. The light is not polarized, but the distribution of polarized light is no longer even. That is why Polaroid su...

Jerry, up to now I have to use two pairs of
polaroid glasses, the other one behind the glass
turned 90 deg to the darkest position.

Bob, the intensity differencies thru a sculpted
form seem to disturb the halo enough.

-lauri

Thanks

-lauri

> Charlie > It can be really tricky when a piece has lots >of curves or relief. Transitional areas pick up light from >some distance and shine more > brightly than the surrounding glass. I've >never heard of normal glass actually polarizing light, >though it can twist already polarized < light. > ch...

Brock recommended in another thread to use 1" kiln posts under the shelf. What is the rationale for this? If the shelf is on the bottom od a kiln, it cools off thru the glass and mold if any. This will extend the annealing time. If the shelf is higher, air circulates under the shelf, too, the c...

I do not have proper polarisationeqipment yet.
Testing with a pair of sunglasses I have got an
impression that the refraction of light in a cast piece with strongly curved surfaces causes polarisation
patterns, too.

Am I right or have I failed in annealing?

-lauri

Bert: >Lauri > > I'm surprised to hear that you got good >results with Chrome. I once tried smelting float glass with >chrome. I got some lovely green > glass, but also got killer stones of >undissolved chrome. It was one of those lucky incidents. I had done some chrome oxide paste for ceramic patin...

As I understand, kaolin is used in kilnwash as binder. It makes a clay body to keep the inert AlO in place. 50/50 seems to sintrate quite solid in higher temps. 20/80 gives a soft onetime mix. The kaolin particles are so much apart they do not sintrate solid. My best surface results are about 30/70 ...

>Do you add the colored frit to your clear glass to color the >batch? > The art glass is so expensive, esepcially if I >want to do large castings. It seems that all the Finnish art glass factories use much the same kind of glass. They all color it with frit from one source. I buy my frit there. I ma...