adventures with broken tempered

[Bert Weiss]

A few years ago, I got a stash of throw away tempered glass from my local fabricator. It came in many sizes and thicknesses. I had it stacked along with some other not tempered glass. I am getting down to the end. I had a large sheet of 10mm in the pile. There was no tempering etch on it. Since 10mm is my main glass, I really had no real clue if this was tempered or annealed. So, I cleaned it and took out my polarized filters. I just had it hanging off of my bench with garage door open so there was plenty of daylight. I saw some strange looking white marks in lines, not dots. Then I saw intense blue stress on the corner. I wasn't sure. So, I took a look at a piece of glass I knew was cut by me. There was no stress on the corner at all. I decided to proceed as if it were tempered. So, I made my mold in the kiln and placed the glass on it. Then I covered the glass with a sheet of heavy plastic and wrapped the plastic around the edges. Then I took my little sledge hammer and banged a corner. All that happened was breaking a decent sized triangle off of the corner. So I hit it really hard in the center of the sheet. The sledge hammer bounced off with no break. So, I exposed a different corner, smacked that and it popped. I rearranged the glass to be roughly 2 layers thick, and fired. Part of the trick is to insure that the tin side was down. Otherwise the bottom surface comes out quite rough.

I have long had trouble keeping a tin scope functional. Over the years, I have bought 2 UVP flashlights. They break pretty easily. Once, I bought a regular fluorescent flashlight and used the germicidal bulb and the purple filter, from the UVP. Recently I bought a cheap germicidal light, taped on the purple filter, but it only worked when upside down. This was a PIA. So, I purchased a 14w germicidal bulb and ballast I found on Ebay. I put it in a length of PVC pipe. I cut out a rectangle in the pipe, and taped the purple filter over it. So, now I have a really good tin scope that plugs in. I can see the tin glow without having to close the garage door.

[Joe Wokovich]

Bert, when do these go into production?

Joe

[Bert Weiss]

Bert, when do these go into production?

Joe

If you mean the light, mine is a duct tape job. And, I have no clue what the purple filter actually is or does. I assume UV gets through it. I am fuzzy on if it makes it safe or not. So I never look longer than necessary. It does make it work really well as a tinscope. Some people seem to report that they use a germicidal light without a filter. If I tried this, I don't remember having any success with it. Since I have had a purple filter on hand, I have always used it.

I open the kiln tomorrow morning to see how the glass did.

[Rick Wilton]

I don't have a purple filter on mine at all. Just the 13w germicidal bulb in a "trouble light" fixture. You do have to cut the plastic housing as the UV won't pass through. The bulb is about 6-7 inches long but I only have about 1/2" open to reduce the shortwave uv escaping the housing.