Scrap into sheet?

[jim burchett]

I am thinking of trying to "press" some Tekta scrap to reuse as sheet glass. Anyone had any luck with this?

[Brad Walker]

Well, not the most beautiful glass you've ever seen, but you can get it to fuse together, a bit thicker than normal and with lots of areas with lines and such.

Never trying doing it as a pot melt, but that might work better than just putting the scraps in the kiln and firing.

[jim burchett]

I am hoping that Pressing the glass will cause enough movement and flow that the usual lines won't be there..have LOTS of tekta scrap so it's worth a try

[Brad Walker]

Let me know how it works out.

[The Hobbyist]

Years ago I had the same thoughts you're experiencing. From them the "Hobbyist" lace technique was developed.

When I was just starting in fused glass I acquired a few hundred pounds of clear BE scrap. I couldn't do any thing creative with the pieces so I started turning the scraps into frit. Besides using the frit in combination with sheet glass, other colored frit and powders I thought "Can I turn it back into sheet glass?"

So I carefully covered a large portion of a kiln shelf with enough frit (one smooth layer) to form what I thought would melt into a regular 3mm sheet. When I opened the kiln after taking it to a full fuse and proper anneal I was shocked and at first disappointed with the result. It didn't form a sheet at all. It formed what I later developed into lace. I had not allowed for the effect of surface tension to pull the various frits together randomly to make connected mounds 1/4" thick in a lattice pattern. That first "lace" was rather clumpy. I soon learned to distribute the frit more carefully so that I could obtain a uniformly random overall lace effect. That lead to changing/combining colors, adding powders, fusing onto sheet glass, etc. to make components and/or various functional forms.

From that "mistake" I have spent many years making lots of fused items that incorporate a lace. I never had the artistic sense to use them in their raw form to make "art" (à la Karen Bexfield) Nearly all of my work is "functional".

Another technique I played with at the time was to (correct my initial error) and spread out enough frit, by weight, to form a 1/4" thick sheet. It doesn't look like factory produced glass sheet but can be developed into some nice work. One of my favorites is to add a thick layer of powder to the frit before forming into a sheet. That produces a cool spider web effect.

I hope I've been of some help and/or encouragement in working with scraps................................Jim "The Hobbyist"

[jim burchett]

Actually the first test worked much better than I expected. I had layered scrap glass in the middle of a 20" shelf 5 or 6 layers thick over about 1/2 The shelf, I placed another shelf on top, repeated. So had 2 layers of glass I was trying to press. Used the schedule for " working under pressure" with a 1 hour hold at 1550C
I HAD shimmer the corners of the shelf at 3mm. I did not hold long enough as the finished slabs were 6mm thick but the internal lines that are usually present in recycled scrap were not there, very few bubbles, except for the texture picked up from the shel they are transparent.
I will try again with a longer hold or higher temp and a bit more weight on the shelf, but so far success. The boxes of scrap from making thousands of spoonrests is finally going to be put to use. Happy New Year.

[jim burchett]

Trying this with Black scrap now..?it's cooling

[Havi]

Please post photos of results...................


Thanks
Havi

[jim burchett]

The black seemed to come out fine..I sandblasted both sides and have it in now on thinfire to Firepolish.