Moderator: Tony Smith
I've been using Wissmach 90 almost exclusively for about a year. Love it. There are 10 cathedrals and 4 opals. The white is beautiful but a little difficult to cut; everything else cuts beautifully. They have 2MM and 3MM in flat and patterned sheets. Had some devit in one color at high fusing temps, but have been firing with lower temps with no devit at all.Barry Kaiser wrote:Wissmach does make a 96, and yes they do make their own glass..
I only use their 90, and I have never had a devit problem with it.
Just an observation. Probably 1/4 to 1/2 or the people I teach come from a stained glass background.
Barry
For the kiln, it was fired in "Small Piece Slumping" fire schedule built into the kiln by Jen-Ken as the manual said if the piece is less than 3/8" thick to use that schedule. Leave it to the first piece to come out great and the rest wonky. This program heats at 300ºF/hour to 1000ºF and holds this temperature for 0 minutes.Marty wrote:I kind of like the wonky blue one.
You're not going to like this: "it was fired in "Small Piece Slumping" fire schedule built into the kiln" will not get you anywhere. You need to know what happens at different temps and why you ramp and hold for x time at y temp at all stages of the schedule. Especially with unknown glass. That cracked piece may not have been just unhappy with itself; it may have been miserable with the all-purpose schedule.
Jen-Ken says that the programming is conservative, and that you should be able to make it "quicker" after experimenting with what works or doesnt work. What that means I dont know. Wow, Bert, you are so generous.Bert Weiss wrote:Your conservative program failed to conserve all of your pieces. So, you can balance your desire to save time with the need to break no pieces. Unless you can come up with an alternate reason why the broken one broke, the heatup rate was the culprit. There could be other reasons the piece experienced unevenivity, but rate is the most likely. The other reason would have to do with the way the mold interacts with the glass to somehow cause unevenivity. Or the glass could be too close to the elements for their configuration. However slowing down is still a solution to those problems.
Brock wrote:Slumped bottles are the suncatchers of fusing, only way less interesting.
The best part of slumping the wine bottles is emptying them with a bunch of friendsBrock wrote:Anything is more fun than a collapsed wine bottle . . .
Thanks Bert, I scored and snapped the broken plate a few times and it felt just like regular glass. Didnt feel any different in any way.Bert Weiss wrote:I would probably anneal at a lower temperature like 920º. There are no exactly right or wrong ways to get the anneal done. And, chances are a simple shutoff is sufficient for a 3mm piece inside your kiln. So, it might not matter at all. Try this test. Take a piece of the broken glass and see how it feels with your glass cutter. It should cut easier than when it was part of the sheet you bought. The reason for this is that glass companies carefully calculate how fast they can anneal their glass so you can cut it. Every second extra, they spend, costs them money. When we anneal at home, we have different needs. Until you get thicker, the big deal for most people is to complete a firing cycle once a day. Consequently, we should be annealing better than them. So, if your glass feels easy to cut, you don't need to change anything. If it is brittle and difficult to break out, revisit your schedule.
Hi Bert,Bert Weiss wrote:Ben
No need to solve problems you don't have, then.
Posts on a bulletin board are tough to pull out the nuances of what is being said or not said. There is no tone of voice or inflection. All I meant was, if your glass is annealing well, you don't really need to change. As to the cracked glass, I would suggest you change, as I would prefer, myself, to never lose glass to thermal shock. However that is certainly up to your discretion.beninfl wrote:Hi Bert,Bert Weiss wrote:Ben
No need to solve problems you don't have, then.
I cant figure out if your message was meant to push me to try and solve the problem harder, poke fun at me, or to postulate that the idea of the stained glass random sheet cracking wasnt really fixable. If I said something that sounded off or sounded like I wasnt trying to heed your advice, I apologize, I never meant for anything to sound like that at all. I was only trying to report back that the plate scores and snaps like regular stained glass. Again, apologies if something came off wrong. On the plate cracking, I cant really see myself investing much time into that piece, as now with the real System 96 glass in the shop we're able to learn from simpler things like layering pendants and plates. So far the results from using real System 96 glass has been quite nice from a beginner standpoint. I do greatly value your, and everyones, thoughts and suggestions as we progress in this fascinating world of warm glass. We're always warm and fuzzy with hugs and cupcakes, never try to discount others or ignore at all, so sorry again if thats what it sounded like!
Inventory-wise we now have 100 sheets of System 96 glass, 1# of dichro, 10#'s of clear odds, and 5#'s of color odds to play with. With the 15/6 kiln that should last us a long time...... I cant wait to see what things look like in the next few weeks and few months.
B & V
Thanks Bert!Bert Weiss wrote:Posts on a bulletin board are tough to pull out the nuances of what is being said or not said. There is no tone of voice or inflection. All I meant was, if your glass is annealing well, you don't really need to change. As to the cracked glass, I would suggest you change, as I would prefer, myself, to never lose glass to thermal shock. However that is certainly up to your discretion.
Pendants work on very different paradigms than larger works. They are easier to anneal, and are far more forgiving.
In general, you want to change when you need to solve a problem. No problems; changing could introduce new problems. The process here is to follow your muse. Get excited about what you like and do it some more. Eventually you see yourself in the work. Then you can repeat seeing yourself.
