Frit Compatibility

[Katherine M]

Hello;
my local landfill has begun giving away the tons of recycled frit it produces on a daily basis. I am fully aware that the sources of the different glass/bottle types are all different, therefore is it just plain lunacy to experiment with using this frit? It is extremely appealing to make projects out of recycled glass.
And, if one did so, is the general thinking that if a glass project is going to fail, it would exhibit this failure right out of the kiln, not much later on?
Thank you for your help.
Katherine M

[Laurie Spray]

It can fail 6 months later...... Just not a good thing unless you are keeping the piece yourself.

[bob proulx]

What Laurie says is correct.The one safe way to play with recycled glass is to use the glass from one bottle or one window pane, you know those are compatable. Below is a piece I recently made using recycled window glass.
Bob

[Morganica]

It's not just plain lunacy, but it certainly isn't the best idea on the planet. I've made tack-fused tempered glass pieces coming from multiple sources--the little cubes--that held and exhibited remarkably little stress under the scope. But that's probably the exception, not the rule.

I pretty much confine whatever I'm working on to the same sheet (which often dictates the size of the pieces). You might get away with using finely crushed frit simply because on that scale, individual incompatibilities are too small to break out of the work. And if you can buy a couple of sheets of polarizing filter to make your own polariscope, you can construct pieces from this frit and then see how much stress each exhibits. If it's too much, trash the piece and check the next.

It would be interesting to see how many pieces survive the scope...

[Lynn g]

Gorgeous piece, Bob.

[Nicole Hanna]

Katherine,
Think outside the kiln....maybe use the frit in other ways, like in resin or concrete for mosaic type stuff? I dunno...just thought I'd throw it out there, since it's free, maybe there's another avenue to explore with it if you want...

Nicole

[Stephen Richard]

There is a company ( don't have the reference) that uses glass frit instead of sand to produce translucent concrete bricks. Possibly translucent panels for load bearing walls? Up lit paving stones? Privacy screens? etc.

[Eric Baker]

Stephen,

translucent concrete sounds fabulous. If you stumble upon a link to that company, would you mind posting it here?

thanks,

Eric

[Brock]

Easily found with Google . . .

[Stephen Richard]

Here is a reference to translucent concrete from my Glass News blog:
http://glass-news-items.blogspot.co.uk/ ... crete.html

[Eric Baker]

Hi Stephen,

That link to Litracon was great--the architectural implications are amazing.

With only a quick glance at the site, I envision amazing high-rise living quarters in the not-so-distant future (9 billion folks in 2050--yikes?). Assuming structural, weight-bearing integrity for large scale construction, of course...

thanks for the link.

[jolly]

It would be interesting to find out what other people that are picking up the free frit are doing with it. If you want compatible frit, just take a piece of tempered glass clean it well, wrap it in a tarp and snap off a corner with pliers. Voila, your very own compatible frit.