Caping Irid for a vessel sink

Phil Hoppes · Post by **Phil Hoppes** » Tue Jul 22, 2003 12:49 pm

Got a little problem. I'm working on a commission for a vessel sink for a customer who would like the sink to be made from the tessellation patterns I do with irids. Here's my problem. I'm very concerned about having the irid surface in a sink. I have no idea what the long term effects that soaps, solvents, scrubbing, etc is going to have on the irid surface. It is pretty tough, I know, but for what she is going to pay for the sink, I would not want anything to go wrong with the surface. I thought of capping the glass but irids do not take kindly to more than one full fuse. I just did a test case and the irid fractured like crackle glass plus the design becomes very difficult to see as it is buried in the glass. I capped with 1.5mm clear so to make it as thin as possible and it is still very dull. I can do my design with a single fuse, I just need to build the under layers first and then fuse the full sink sheet at once with the top layer being the irid design. I was wondering if there is anything I can cap or cover the irid so as to protect the surface or am I worrying about something that is not really a problem?

Phil

Bert Weiss · Post by **Bert Weiss** » Tue Jul 22, 2003 1:12 pm

Phil Hoppes wrote:Got a little problem. I'm working on a commission for a vessel sink for a customer who would like the sink to be made from the tessellation patterns I do with irids. Here's my problem. I'm very concerned about having the irid surface in a sink. I have no idea what the long term effects that soaps, solvents, scrubbing, etc is going to have on the irid surface. It is pretty tough, I know, but for what she is going to pay for the sink, I would not want anything to go wrong with the surface. I thought of capping the glass but irids do not take kindly to more than one full fuse. I just did a test case and the irid fractured like crackle glass plus the design becomes very difficult to see as it is buried in the glass. I capped with 1.5mm clear so to make it as thin as possible and it is still very dull. I can do my design with a single fuse, I just need to build the under layers first and then fuse the full sink sheet at once with the top layer being the irid design. I was wondering if there is anything I can cap or cover the irid so as to protect the surface or am I worrying about something that is not really a problem?

Phil

Phil

What about clear frit?

Phil Hoppes · Post by **Phil Hoppes** » Tue Jul 22, 2003 1:52 pm

That is an interesting idea.....

One part I neglected to mention is that an important part of the design is that after the first fuse I go back, mask the seams and blast them to remove the irid and cleanly define the lines, which is a critical part of the design element. If I put the frit on thinly, I could possibly cover with a thin layer of clear frit at the same full fuse and if it is not too thick I could still be able to go back and blast the seams.

I'm guessing I'd want coarse frit as fine or power will just give me an explosion of bubble in the glass, correct?

That's worth a few trial tiles to see what I can do. Could be an interesting effect if I can make it work.

Tnx Bert. Always a good help.

Phil

Bob · Post by **Bob** » Tue Jul 22, 2003 3:08 pm

Phil,

Some interesting design/construction problems you pose. I have two suggestions.

1) If you use frit directly on top of the irid surface the top irid surface will be somewhat distorted by the shapes of the frit pieces. The irid surface won't be smooth... it will have a hammered texture. The coarser the frit the more pronounced the effect. Also if the layer of frit isn't several grains thick then the irid coating will squeeze up between the frit grains resulting in a mottled irid texture on the top surface.

2) why not cap the piece with a sheet of clear irid with the irid side facing down . The pattern can be blasted onto the irid surface. when it is fused onto the underlying layer the glass in contact with the irid surface will appear to be iridized. So if the irid was placed directly against a sheet of black that is not iridized, the black would appear to be iridized. I do this with powder a lot.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Bob

Tony Smith · Post by **Tony Smith** » Tue Jul 22, 2003 3:10 pm

What about having the irid on the outside of the vessel Phil?

Tony

Phil Hoppes · Post by **Phil Hoppes** » Tue Jul 22, 2003 4:37 pm

Bob,

On 1). Yea, I figured that would be the effect. I've beed doing lots of other work with frit from powders to quarter size and you get a gradual hammering the larger you go in frit covering. Cool effect actually but I'm not sure it is what the customer wants. I think I'm still going to try some test pieces anyway as I want to see the various effects. Who knows, maybe she will like the effect.

On 2) I could do this but I didn't explain my design that well. I actually make tessellations by cutting gold, silver and rainbow irid sheets into two basic design elements that are used to construct a Penrose tessellation. There are two basic shapes so you take that against 3 basic colors and you have a pallet of 6 elements to work with. Actually since the gold irids are not that uniform I break these down into about 3 sub classes of colors and the rainbows break down into about 6 sub classes. This gives me a final pallet of about 10 colors across 2 shapes or about 20 unique design elements. If I just blasted the pattern into a single color irid it would work but I would not get the vairation in design that I'm looking for. ( I always do things complicated...simple for some reason is not my forte) There are some other designs I'm looking at doing where I would do exactly this but not on this particular design.

As far as putting the irid on the outside, I could do that but since it is on the bottom side of a sink it would really not be seen.

Me thinks I'm going to show her a few other design options and if she still has to have the irid design then I believe a "Damage Waiver" at the time of sale is going to be the order of the day.

Thanks for all the good ideas. I'm going to try some test firings of different clear on irid just to see the effects. I might want to use that on some other designs.

Phil

Tony Smith · Post by **Tony Smith** » Tue Jul 22, 2003 4:48 pm

Phil,

Maybe it's time to take an irid plate and run it through the dishwasher every night to see how it wears.

Tony

Phil Hoppes · Post by **Phil Hoppes** » Tue Jul 22, 2003 5:00 pm

Tony,

Stop that......yea I was thinking the same thing. kind of unscientific but it would give me a better handle on seeing how it would last. Actually I was thinking of taking one I didn't like and letting some soapy water dry up and leave a good scum all over it and then wash it off and see what it looks like. She was saing that this would be in a Powder Bathroom which I'm assuming would only get hand soap inside of it. If she used a mild hand soap it might just be fine. It's that scum you get from toothpaste and anything a kid could possibly bring into the house that has me more worried!!

Phil

charlie · Post by **charlie** » Tue Jul 22, 2003 5:06 pm

scrub it a lot with something with pumice in it, as that's what's going to happen with it.

ps: you should use footnotes. i'm sure i wasn't the only one who had to look up penrose. there's a lot of his different tilings, which are you using?

Tony Smith · Post by **Tony Smith** » Tue Jul 22, 2003 8:39 pm

Phil

I was trying to think of how you could bath with it, but I got carried away with the thought of showering with an irid bowl...

Any chance you could do the same process with super sparkle mica? It'll give you a similar appearance as irid... just no rainbow.

And it should be very durable.

Tony

Amy Schleif-Mohr · Post by **Amy Schleif-Mohr** » Wed Jul 23, 2003 9:48 am

Phil,

Is there a possibility that you could cut your pieces out of clear irids and fuse them face up on a sheet of clear then flipping them over onto black and then you would have the variations you are looking for, but they would be encased.

Yet another sample to make haha

Amy

Lani McGregor · Post by **Lani McGregor** » Wed Jul 23, 2003 10:27 am

Phil Hoppes wrote:... Here's my problem. I'm very concerned about having the irid surface in a sink. I have no idea what the long term effects that soaps, solvents, scrubbing, etc is going to have on the irid surface. It is pretty tough, I know, but for what she is going to pay for the sink, I would not want anything to go wrong with the surface. ...am I worrying about something that is not really a problem?

Phil

Hi Phil,

Direct from the Bullseye Bad Housekeeping Laboratories:

Dan & I have had Bullseye irid (face up) in floor tiles and stair treads in our home for YEARS. The tin surface actually takes abuse better than the glass itself. Less scumming, less noticeable weathering.

Weâ€™ve also done the famous Krueger Steak Knife test on the surface of irid sushi plates (for people who use their sushi dishes for London Broil) to see how much the surface would scratch up. After thrashing and trashing, the minor scratches were less evident on the irid surface than on the uncoated glass surface.

From my experience, Iâ€™d say NOT A PROBLEM.

- Lani

Phil Hoppes · Post by **Phil Hoppes** » Thu Jul 24, 2003 1:37 pm

To Lani,

Thanks for the info. Can't get much closer to the source than that. To tell you the truth that is kind of what I expected. Given that you have to blast the stuff off I figured it had to be pretty tough.

The client is thrilled with the samples I showed her (Smaller tessellation bowls as an example of color and design) so things are moving along.

Phil

Jack Bowman · Post by **Jack Bowman** » Tue Dec 02, 2003 2:52 am

Phil,

How did this project turn out?

Jack

WarmGlass.com

Caping Irid for a vessel sink

Caping Irid for a vessel sink

Re: Caping Irid for a vessel sink

Re: Caping Irid for a vessel sink