Salvage ideas for cracked thick piece
Posted: Mon May 13, 2013 7:53 pm
I make a very thick piece (8 X 10 in.) using Spectrum. It grew to about 1/2 thick because I needed to make sure that some mica inclusions were completely covered. It fused nicely. I trimmed it a bit and fire polished it. So far so good. A few months later I got around to slumping it in a simple square slumper. I followed the firing schedule for 1/2 inch glass I got from the Spectrum website but ramp up #3 was not specified. I tried to figure out an appropriate ramp and target temperature. Needless to say, I chose WRONG.
100 300 15
250 1050 10
150 1245 I checked at 10 minutes and the piece was already cracked and slumped. I annealed anyway.
9999 950 90
100 800 10
300 100 0
Brad's book said to go slower if a piece had been previously fused and if it is thick, but I'm not sure how much slower I should have gone. Perhaps I should have slumped at a lower temperature, but I'm not sure how much lower I should have gone. Any advice would be appreciated.
I'd like to salvage the glass. The bottom layer is blue aventurine. The next layer consists of pieces of lavendar opal and pieces of clear smeared with mica mixed with glass tac. One top is the equivalent to two layers of clear. I thought I would dam the two piece on two side to try to keep the two pieces close to each other and then bring it up to full fuse temperature and just let the whole thing seek a 1/4 inch depth. Will the mica make a mess on my shelf? Should I do this directly on the shelf or should I use Thin Fire? Should I not even attempt this?? Any other suggestions??? Thank you in advance for your input.
Firing Schedule:100 300 15
250 1050 10
150 1245 I checked at 10 minutes and the piece was already cracked and slumped. I annealed anyway.
9999 950 90
100 800 10
300 100 0
Brad's book said to go slower if a piece had been previously fused and if it is thick, but I'm not sure how much slower I should have gone. Perhaps I should have slumped at a lower temperature, but I'm not sure how much lower I should have gone. Any advice would be appreciated.
I'd like to salvage the glass. The bottom layer is blue aventurine. The next layer consists of pieces of lavendar opal and pieces of clear smeared with mica mixed with glass tac. One top is the equivalent to two layers of clear. I thought I would dam the two piece on two side to try to keep the two pieces close to each other and then bring it up to full fuse temperature and just let the whole thing seek a 1/4 inch depth. Will the mica make a mess on my shelf? Should I do this directly on the shelf or should I use Thin Fire? Should I not even attempt this?? Any other suggestions??? Thank you in advance for your input.