Decorative plates

[thebige61]

Here are some decorative plates I made as Christmas gifts using pot melts and blown glass scrap.

[charlie]

colorful, but i would find it hard to actually eat off these.

[Mike Jordan]

Very pretty colors. You ought to set one on a record player and let it spin at 33 rpm.

Mike

[S.TImmerman]

Busy, busy busy!!!

[Valerie Adams]

Looks like you're having fun with pot melts and I'm sure every recipient was thrilled with their gift.

If I may, I'd suggest trying a solid color border, either in a contrasting or complementary color, to really showcase the melt. Of course, that's my taste and may not be yours.

[thebige61]

Busy, busy busy!!!

Yeah. It took longer than I thought it would. I have a Paragon Fusion 16 so I can only do one plate at a time. With my current rig it takes 5 firings to do each one. Sometimes 6 if a plate ends up with gratuitous devit on it. I've been doing my melts using a Sumpys 8 inch mini melt casting ring and 8 inch terracotta saucers. I crate a blank 12 mm thick and then flatten it out. I recently got more kiln furniture so I can now do a melt directly into casting ring and save myself a step. I do a contour fuse on the plates (to 1400 hold for 10) to round the edges after grinding. I'm going to see if devit removal will work during that firing (after etching the surface). I've normally removed devit using a fire polish (to 1325) since everybody and their dog says that you need to keep the glass out of the upper 1300 - 1400 range to remove devit. Anyway...I'm rambiling. I'm fairly new at this (and having a blast).

E

[Joe Lorenzino]

Nice Work!! I really like the pot melt on the last one.

Isn't it fun when things in the kiln start to work out RIGHT??
When inspiration hits, a person would need a GB4, a room full of kilns (and maybe a fleet of "minions") to fuse it all!
Ride the "blast wave" as long as you can...

What sort/type/COE of blown glass scraps are you using?

[thebige61]

What sort/type/COE of blown glass scraps are you using?

COE 96. The first melt I tried used Coe 90 in a slumpys 6 inch mini melt pot. It was a disaster. It ended up with spider web cracking all throughout the melt. I scoured the interwebs for answers and the best explanation I could come up with is that I made the melt using a combination of Bullseye and Wissmach glass and the Wissmach glass experienced a COE shift under extreme temperature. Wissmach (being the cheaper glass) may not be as stable as Bullseye at pot melt temperatures. I've mixed Wissmach and Bullseye in smaller projects without any problems but then again I was firing at lower temps.

While doing my research I kept reading that COE 96 is a little bit easier to work with and more forgiving. One day I was searching EBay for different types of glass components and came across a glass blower that was selling their scraps for dirt cheap. That's when the lights went on. I bought a box and that glass with some slumpys buffalo chips and had my first successful melt. The plate with the single yellow spiral was from that fist lot of melts I tried.

[Stephen Richard]

Wissmach 90 and Bullseye are not very likely to be compatible. You need to test them for compatibility before combining them in a piece. The Coe number does not tell you anything about compatibility. Coe number is not a shorthand for compatibility. It is no wonder that people have difficulty when books, teachers and retailers give this rubbish information to novices. How to sort out the books? I don't think the retailers or teachers can be sorted except by market forces.