WarmGlass.com

I find my plastic ones have more grip for glass than any metal ones.
Different ones for different jobs.

I presume you kept the old controller. Open it up and look for a little glass tube containing the fuse wire. Chances are there is one in there although some lower quality units may not have such things. Held in place by two clips the fuse pops out. You can sometimes see the wire broken inside or the...

It sounds like a great idea but I suspect the flux will act like a wetting agent and make the glass want to stick to the mold material. Of course that wouldn't matter if you were going to send it out to an acid polisher or were able to polish it yourself. The real answer is more heat or a more flowi...

i don't know the internals on the controller that died but I had Digitry controller fail because a fuse inside it burned out when a sending unit from a thermocouple was damaged. Popped in a new fuse and I was back working.

If you have Brad's Warmglass book, in it you will find an upper torso without much detail, by Brock Craig. When I bought out his studio I obtained that mold. I found it lacking in details and I increased the neck and sides and added the missing naughty bits to the glass I made with it. If you want a...

I cut with a series of drilled and jig saw cutting a curved slot/pocket in a slab of wood. In my situation a 2x10 piece of lumber was used. I had the board running front to back and the slot/pocket cut on an angle so the glass torso could lean back slightly and become self supporting. Best of all wi...

Ceramic tubes are available. Old knob and tube wiring tubes could work as well. Get your wiring inspected before using.

Digitry. Why? They work. With a battery backup system short power failures can be ignored as the unit will continue the firing when the power comes back on The value of a saved load of glass can be more than the price of the unit. Combine with Mercury relays for long high temperature holds. Worried ...

This is a good example of exploring concepts.
I presume you are aware of Brian Blanthorn's works?
It is a great twist on the viewing window idea.

Considering some stainless will also spall, you just have to live with it and ensure there is enough kiln wash used. Might be an idea to have an easy to clean up surface beneath the mold to catch the bits.

Kanthal A1

That is when you have to work with lower cost materials and just use a Dremel and diamond bit. If you are into sandblasting and shading depths of glass your cost is already too high in terms of time spent cutting stencils etc. I'm in this book with flattened bottle and hand drawn engraving. Just one...

I suggest blade stiffeners. Your issue will be keeping your cuts straight and my issue is trying to figure out how to cut pattern bars with a blade that has no glass waste. Bit of an impossibility but the blade stiffeners could help as could a smaller blade. Figure out a way to wet both sides of the...

Cheaper? simpler still would be to fire regular art glass of the colour you wanted, engrave it and then rub white chalk into the engraving to give it the white accented look you desire. If you wanted to be fancy you could use coloured chalks and instead of the animals looking fire ash coloured white...

Nothing like a regular kiln shelf for taking accidental abuse. I built my own kilns and went with traditional kiln shelves. In theory there is less thermal mass in the kiln because of the fibre shelf but by the time you solidify it with cement, I cannot visualize much benefit during heating and cool...

If it takes a week for full chemical resistance then it is still curing to maximum strength. The week came from looking it up online on the company website. For sure, heat curing speeds up strength gain in most epoxies. It looks to be similar in strength to glue I use so I'll stick with what I know....

Or you need to pack an inner shell holding the carefully placed powder in place.

No, Dick that resin has a 7 day full cure.

I commiserate with you LOL. What is the metal doing inside the kiln conducting all the precious heat to the exterior? Good luck. Whoever made it didn't know what they were doing. In case you can't get a refund, cutting the interior metal bars out of the lid and bottom may make it usable. But you did...

watch your temperatures LOL

Look through the files on Warmglass
Like this in the photo section.
http://www.warmglass.com/phpBB3/viewtop ... re#p351974