Slump and Fire Polish

[lbailey]

I have a small order for 25 9"" plates. I'll be using BE's 10" square slumping mold. I made the first plate yesterday and it slumped nicely @ 1170 F, held for 10 minutes.

I don't care for the half round full fused edges so I lightly ground the edges flat/square with a #270 disc on my flat lap, then polished them on my WBS using 400, 600 and cork belts. It came out just the way I had hoped, but I am looking for a more productive way of achieving the same results for the other 24 plates......

1170 F seems way too low to expect a FP to happen, could I slump at a higher temp and skip all the work on the WBS? I'd still square up the edges on the flat lap with #270 but then I'd need a pretty hot slump to get a nice shiny FP, right?

Will a short 3-5 minute hold at something around 1350-1375 F work without introducing new problems? One that I think might pop up is that the (opaque white) bottom layer will pick up a bunch of KW off the molds. Then I would have to scrape/sand the molds, re-coat.... not really saving any time.

Spitball slump/FP schedule:
200 DPH 1100F 10 min
AFAP 1375F 5 min (want to maintain the square edges, is this too high?)
AFAP 900F 60 min
150 700F Off

Extra texture on the bottom from the mold is not an issue, and the customer wants the plates capped with clear so I assume that devit will not be an issue. All plates are 2 layer BE.

(Don't have the extra material of the right colors to test this approach. On a tight schedule so can't order more and still make the deadline.) Thanks guys.

[Kevin Midgley]

Never hand polish on machinery when you have a kiln that will round it all.
get a better kiln wash. Use bullseye