The Skinny On Pot Melts

[Marge B]

Randy: you know what they say - a picture is worth a thousand words

Thank you two thousand so much - and every one else for all the input - this is why I think glass people are just the coolest - OR the hotest?

Marge B.

[Jerry]

Talc is available at most pottery supply houses. It's different from baby powder in that it doesn't have all the "smell pretty" stuff in it and is a whole lot less expensive as long as you buy it in 50 pound bags. As a system of stopping kiln wash sticking, I don't think it can be beat.

Jerry

[Linda Hassur]

Two different people talked about finishing the edges the way Patty Gray does. I'm unfamiliar with this. What does she do? Linda

[Kitty]

LINDA - they're talking about putting a rim on a disk. look at patty's website, and you'll see she has added rims to some of her pieces, sometimes 2 rims, each of a different color. also, she has a terrific tutorial on cutting circles, which is how i learned to do it. http://www.pattygray.com

[rodney]

randy wrote:

Dark colors tend to dominate over the other colors. In picture #6 I used 50 ounces of glass, equal parts of blue, red, yellow and orange and the blue totally took over. This wasn't what I was expecting but it turned out OK anyways. That's the cool thing about pot melts, you never know how they are going to turn out.
http://users.wi.net/~magnum/PotMelts/6.JPG

hey there randy, i think on this, it wasnt so much the blue took over as the combination of all the color you use will go toward BLACK, if you would have used blue and yellow, it would have come out yellow and blue and green,,,but when you throw in orange, thats going toware brown/ black, and put in some red, and thats really going toward brown/black, less colors means much cleaner,,,,mixing only two primary colors is great, but when all three are present, you are going toward mud,,,,,thanks for posting the pics, they are very helpful,,rodney

[charlie]

Some time back, my Wife took a glass painting class. In that class she learned that firing the glass, typically float, would leave texture on the back unless you did something to prevent it. And that "something" was a 1/4" layer of TALC. What I do that works so well is to sift a thick layer into or onto the area I'm going to melt on. Then, and this is the neat part, take a piece of paper and press it down on the talc. That leaves a wonderfully smooth surface that the glass doesn't often disturb. THEN I put the base sheet down and melt onto it. When it's done all I need to do is wash it with a sponge. No more scraping, no more sand blasting, no more CLR and Muriatic acid. It really is too good to be true.

do you press the paper down with another piece of glass? do you remove the paper (which may disturb the surface) or just let it burn off?

[charlie]

How does one cut the kiln shelves into those strips? And is there anything else I could use to support the pot?

ceramic or porcelin tiles cut on a wet saw. lots cheaper (or free) to get chipped ones from a tile store than shelves.

[Annah James]

WOW! I've never seen pot melts before...what a great way to use up scrap glass...I keep pounding it into frit, selling it to casters...but this - this looks way fun. I'm trying it next week...thanks for the great idea!