Bullseye Scrap - What to do with all this?

[starchimes (Andrea)]

I never throw away my bullseye glass. I keep accumulating more and more. What do you guys do with your excess. I have tons of little pieces.

[Dolores]

Believe it or not, scrap can be a good thing. You can lampwork beads with it, make mosaics, or fuse jewelry. Try it as accents on your larger pieces, make your own frit, stick similar colors in a clear vase with some artificial flowers (great display at shows!). Polish it in a rock tumbler and sprinkle it over a tabletop for added color. If you're feeling enterprising, try auctioning it off on Ebay or Yahoo. Has anyone gotten bored enough to try fusing it all in one big lump just to see what happens? Oh yeah, make stringers accents with a torch, put it at the bottom of your potted plants for irrigation, put it in a jar and play "guess the number of glass pieces in this jar and win a prize" game at your next party after which you can play the "guess how much glass is stashed in my studio" game. The possiblilities are endless!

DOLORES (who currently has no idea how much glass is stashed in her studio)

[Joanne Owsley]

How about pattern bars? Don't forget those!

[Phil Hoppes]

You should send it to me as fast as possible.

[Jerry Cave]

My wifes scrap are my treasures. Since she can't use tiny pieces I get them for my jewelry work. All contributions gladly accepted.

[Kitty]

i cleaned up a lot of pint containers of scraps recently. here's one of the pattern bar plates. it still needs to be acid etched, but otherwise it's done. the colors other than the white are all transparent, so it's got a nice translucent quality. there's a fair amount of clear in it. pardon my cheesy webcam -- rather poor quality.

[Rob Morey]

Scrap?? What's that? Here is what I do with my smaller pieces.

http://www.ramoreydesign.com/shelfmelt.html

I put this together in a hurry so please excuse any spelling errors or some of the other weird stuff that happens on "raw" untested sites.

Rob

[Amy on Salt Spring]

Cool "in action" pictures Rob. This brings up something I have wondered about, not ever having done a pot melt. Don't you end up with little stalagmites of glass from the glass up to whatever device it flowed out of? Do you have to break them off and then put it back in the kiln and go high again to have them smooth out?
-Amy

[Rob Morey]

Yes I do end up with some of the glass still stuck to the original hardware. In some cases I cut off the attached edge with a tile saw. Most of the time I usually just make some scores and then break it all off where the stalagtites meet the glass. Because there is always kiln wash on the bottom and almost always some divit elsewhere, I sandblast everything removing any extra glass that I don't want. Some people cut these up into pattern bars. I don't do pattern bars. I use them as elements in larger pieces.

Rob

[starchimes (Andrea)]

Wow! Thanks for all the ideas. I just have a quickfire kiln right now. Maybe soon I will get a bigger one. I make a lot of flower suncatchers. I have tons of scrap pieces all shaped the same. Image cutting petal after petal. Well I have tons of the shapes that form in between the petals.



I make alot of frit. I really like the custom glass melt from the scrap. That is awesome!

Thanks,
Andrea