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I'm wondering how others who might have this problem are dealing with it? I have been making and selling a large quantity of an item which leaves a good bit of oddly shaped clear scrap. I have boxes of it. I have tried incorporating it into other items..Fish, Garden Octopi, etc but still have large quantities of clear..any suggestions? would ideally love to melt them down to a sheet for reuse..is that doable?

Make it into frit.

Jim

Jim B- you're not going to get a clean, even, thin sheet out of your scraps but you could start casting stuff.

I haven't tried it yet but I intend to have a go at tack fusing rectangular bits together for re-use. The bits left over from cutting circles presents more of a problem. I'm presently setting up to do screen melts which, if successful should use up a lot of the clear.

Jim,
Break it up and cast a sink. Use a solid base then a pattern layer and pile up the pieces inside a 1/8 " fiber paper lined stainless steel ring. Pile up with a high center like a pie. After fusing, finish edges with steps to 400 grit wet sander or diamond disc wet angle grinder. Slump/fire polish into a ss sink mold.
Warren

That stuff is terrific for filler in any glass casting (of the same compatibility, of course). I use it a lot in my pate de verre, for the back, because it lets more light into the piece. It also saves me from filling the entire mold with frit, which in bigger pieces gets kinda spendy. It can work with reservoir casting, potmelts and vitrograph stringer/cane pulls.

Flattening it out on a kilnshelf and melting it down? Not so much. You can clean glass well, then layer it on a kilnshelf so that the pieces overlap, then cover it with another kilnshelf,weight the shelf down and fire it hotter, say 4 hours at 1495F. If you've got multiple kilnshelves you can pile more glass on the top shelf, top THAT with another shelf, and weight the whole assembly down. Remember to put kiln furniture or stacks of fiber paper on the edges of the shelves to keep them from overcompressing and pushing the glass out the sides.

You'll get a pretty flat sheet that can be scored and snapped like regular glass, albeit slowly and more carefully. The demarcations between pieces will show, it may develop some devit around and it will have kilnshelf texture on both sides. You probably won't want to use it anywhere that it would show, but it makes reasonable base glass if you're not going for transparency.

I personally think that's a lot of trouble to go to for an imperfect sheet of glass. When I have a lot of circle cutouts saved up, I make nudibranchs:

More on that: http://www.morganica.com/bloggery/2007/ ... /slugfest/

Thanks for all the good suggestions

We also crush those circle "corners" and put them in stainless steel rings.....using 1/8th " fiber paper. I find that if we do not crush them we see more ghosting which I hate. We do not make them into "frit" just a few wacks to break up the large curved pieces. After the first firing we leave the rings in place and then do some designing on top of the clear base. The design is sort of steared by how the clear glass looks.....if there is alot of ghosting i will decorate with opaques. Makes a good base of glass that would otherwise get tossed. If you do this be sure to do a really good soak to remove bubbles.
Another time saver.....if you clean your whole sheet of clear well before cutting your circle, then throw the scrap into a large covered plastic container. When you are ready all you have to do is crush the glass and fill the forms. No cleaning of small scrap pieces. It is so easy to clean an entire sheet.......not so much small scrap. We go thru around a case of clear here every couple of months here which makes quite a bit of scrap........although we do lots of pot melts with transparents using clear filler that does not keep up with it. Casting in rings does!

Dude, don't let these peole fool you!!! There's NOTHING you can do with Tekta scrap. You must mail it all to me! I'll message you my address.

Judd wrote:Dude, don't let these peole fool you!!! There's NOTHING you can do with Tekta scrap. You must mail it all to me! I'll message you my address.

LOL

I love those nudibranchs, Cynthia.

Michele gh wrote:I love those nudibranchs, Cynthia.

Ditto