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Hello,

Are there any residents of Israel on this board? My landlord owns a small gallery space in Yafo Old City (very desirable, high-traffic tourist area) which she's trying to fill. I'm looking for some local glass artists to form some kind of co-op. Please reply here if interested.

Hi, I'm looking to add the ability to drill and shape holes to my glass - things like holes for bolts or other fasteners, shaped openings for light switches or electrical socket plates, stuff like that, for pieces that are in general 3/8" or less in thickness. I might want to also experiment wi...

Yeah, I know I didn't give any real details. I had two pieces that were virtually identical except one was 6mm thick and the other was 7.5mm; fired identically the thicker one cracked apart during a drape, and judging from the positions of the pieces it broke during the ramp up to process temp. (Onc...

Newbie question: all other things being equal (using Bullseye glass) is a thicker piece more likely or less likely to crack during a slump? I'm trying to think it through and can see an argument for either way.

Paper wrapped over the drape + cup placed atop small block to make sure the inside air is not sealed + ramp down to a lower end temperature = success.

Thanks to all who offered advice.

In general, glass shrinks more than ceramic and less than stainless steel. So, if the glass has somewhere to go when it shrinks, problems can be averted. If the glass has nowhere to go, it simply cracks. Thank you for this extremely simple insight. I confess I never thought about it that way before...

Wow, thanks to everyone. I'll try wrapping the mold in paper, and a longer cooldown, and report back. For anyone who cares.

The firing schedule is a simple 4-phase: 250/300/10, 400/1225/15, 9999/950/60, 100/800/15 This is bullseye 90 COE; 8 roughly pie-wedge-shaped pieces full-fused together into a just-under-3" diameter rough circle. The kiln wash is whatever came with this Skutt kiln. The form is some kind of roug...

Hi, I'm trying to make some very small cups (for an oil lamp). I'm draping over some small forms (about the size and shape of a mini-Reese's, an inch wide and an inch high). I'm using a pretty slow profile, annealing for an hour. Yet the glass keeps shattering at some point during the cooldown. Any ...

The reason I ask is that since I got my kiln and started doing 4-5 firings a week I'm getting this really annoying eczema on my fingers. The timing might be just coincidence, but I'm wondering if it's from handling shelf paper, especially post-firing when it's really friable and just sort of disinte...

Update: fail, fail, fail and fail. And FAIL. Not even salvageable as an interesting failure.

Trying a new approach...

Well, the dime melted. And went through some kind of chemical reaction; it's now a featureless dull-copper-colored disk. The 1-shekel coin came through fine but it's surrounded by a ring of tiny bubbles and micro-cracks in the top glass. Kind of a neat effect, really. I think I'll try again with som...

Thanks for the zinc warning - the coin I was going to try first is mostly zinc. That could've been unfortunate.

Looks like a US dime or an Israeli 1 shekel might be a good choice, they're both copper/nickel with a nice high melting point.

I scour places like Big Lots for cheap frames and cheap framed art. I remove the backing board and the art and epoxy my work to the cover glass, which can then be hung easily. A carefully chosen frame can make for nice presentation as well. You can also put two frames together and add an LED strip o...

I had this idea to make some cabochon beads with coins inside them - a sandwich of, say, black on the bottom, clear on the top, with a penny in the middle. But everything I can find about the composition of common coins and the melting points of their alloys says this probably won't work - the melti...

I've noticed that my kiln has a distinctive odor, kind of like hot bricks I guess, at a certain point in the ramp up, 800F or so. But it goes away before 1000F and doesn't recur during the rest of the cycle. It's not surprising to me that something made of hot bricks should smell like hot bricks, bu...

Thaaaaat's what I figured. I look more closely now, you betcha.

I know where bubbles come from, really. The issue is, I swear to goodness when I took these pieces out of the kiln they were bubble-free. And now, several hours later when I took them off the shelf to do the next phase of work, they have bubbles. Is it at all possible that air bubbles can somehow fo...

I found this tutorial for kilnworked foldover pendants at http://fusedglass.org/learn/project_tutorials/fold-over_pendants and I liked the idea but the method is kind of finicky and I didn't get very good results. So with trial-and-error I figured out a simpler, more consistent way to proceed. I cut...

GuyKass wrote:I would bet what Tracy is referencing is what you are thinking about.

The more technical name is Silver Sulfadiazine. You may not have it by the other name in Israel.

That's the stuff! Thanks, everyone, for plugging my leaky memory.