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Thank you for your reply.

I recently bought a kiln with a downdraft venting system, with the intention of using it to facilitate the drying of plaster/silica molds. I've noticed that I seem to have more mold cracking and I'm wondering if the vent system is drying the mold out too fast. I have been making lost wax castings an...

Thank you, Peter!

I need a deeper kiln for casting and I've been thinking a ceramic kiln would have the configuration I need. I wouldn't need top elements for the type of casting I'm doing, in fact it might work better without. I can get quite a bit of depth with this type of kiln, as long as my back holds out. What ...

I have that DVD on eggshell thin pate de verre. It's very good.

Roadkill??? LOL. Don't think I ever resorted to that, but the other stuff, yeah...

There's a company called K2 that used to sell mica in two particle sizes. Their "sparkle" was the powder and their "glitter" was larger particles. Nobody carries these any more, so I contacted the company and they wanted me to import at least a kilogram of each color. The guy sai...

Actually, I meant to heat the glass in something else in the kiln then drop it into a galvanized bucket with water in it - outside of the kiln. I never meant that the bucket itself would be in the kiln. Maybe I wasn't clear about that.

I did wonder about your warning not to use a galvanized bucket to quench glass since many people cook in them. From what I've heard, zinc vaporizes at around 1600 F, so heating glass to 1000-1200 then dropping it into a galvanized bucket with water in it would be nowhere near 1600F. And even if fume...

Out of curiosity, is Bullseye's Hydrogel the same thing as alginate?

Someone posted (I can't remember where) a warning about not using galvanized buckets for quenching glass. I'm assuming this was due to potential zinc contamination of the glass. Would this really happen? If so, could one paint the bucket to prevent said contamination?

My apologies, it's the Paradise Paint that is no longer available, not Sunshine.

Thanks, guys. Lot's to think about here!

I read that Sunshine isn't available anymore but I do think I'll try the Ferro. I'm also looking at another brand that says you can mix the colors and also screen it. The colors don't look quite as bright on my computer but you know how that goes!

Bert, thank you!

Rats, I had high hopes for the Thompson - I test fired some pink and it was beautiful. I have some of their 7000 series, which are for fusing on glass.

Thanks for the Ferro link, I'll check it out.

I have a Pyrex measuring cup that I've had for years. It became crazed in the dishwasher because some soaps are very abrasive. If I took a sandblaster to an iridized plate that was already fused, I could blow off the irid and I think, over time, the dishwasher could do the same thing.

I'm about to embark on screen printing enamels and have a couple of questions that I'm hoping you experts can help me with. :-) - Does the grain size of the powder matter? I notice Fuse Master is 340 mesh and Thompson Enamels is 80 (not sure about Ferro). Once you mix it with a medium does either wo...

Fenton and Kerwin's book, Pate de Verre and Kiln Casting of Glass, gives a lot of information about different kinds of investment mixes. One of their mixes has kaolin clay (or EPK) included, which acts as a property modifier and, according to them, helps the mold seperate from the glass. Their propo...

Or, you can form the clay into a shape, like say a cube, calculate its volume in cubic centimeters, than take that volume times 2.5 to get the grams of glass that you will need. (2.5 grams/cubic centimeters being the density/specific gravity of Bullseye glass).

Thanks, Cynthia!