Firing glass over plant material

[Katie M]

I want to take "cattails" and hit them with hairspray and sift colored powders over the plants and lay them on a sheet of fiber paper. Then I am going to cover them with a single sheet of clear double-thick spectrum glass to create an imbedded image. I have lost my notes on my firing and annealing schedule for when I did this before with pine boughs. Can anyone suggest a schedule. I have a Paragon GL-24 kiln. I can't remember the top end temp and the hold time and also I am thinking I need to slow down the anneal because of the variation of thickness the glass will have where the plant material will have burned off.

Thanks for any thoughts on this.

Katie

[JestersBaubles]

Here is my experience, and there's also info on the Helios web site (where I "copied" the idea from and that I link to in my blog post):

http://jestersbaubles.blogspot.com/2010 ... -fall.html

FWIW, there won't be much difference in your thickness of the glass itself because of the cattails. A single layer is still pretty much a single layer, two-layer stays two layers, etc.

Dana W.

[Katie M]

Thanks for the info Dana. I fired my cattails and unfortunately the piece broke after it was out of the kiln for a day. The Cattails were pretty thick and I think I took the top temperature too high. When I took it out of the kiln the areas where the thick Cattails burned out were like hollow bubbles and the glass was much thinner there than the rest of the panel. I will tweak my schedule and try again.

Katie

[bhawbaker]

I think the cattail's too thick to do what you want, but try firing on 1/8" or 1/4" fiber paper instead of thinfire. I've done many leaves this way and captured great vein patterns in the glass. The thicker fiber paper may help the gas dissipate as the organic material burns and reduce bubbles. Be sure you vent your kiln to 1000.

[Valerie Adams]

Can you try cutting the cattails in half so you reduce their mass?

[Katie M]

Thanks for the info everyone. I do fire on 1/8" fiber paper, not ThinFire. I think it will work if I cut the fat part of the cattail in half. Will try again.

Katie

[Karyn Cott]

When I use foliage under glass, I will cut the thick parts lengthwise and I also either dry them flat with weight on them or I put them in the microwave with weight and dry them out that way. With this method I have never had an issues with bubbles or breakage. I have done this many times and have sold this type of glass many times as well, and have never had a customer come back with any complaint. Hope this helps you as well.