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I have been reading all of this pot melt info and went to the archives to learn all that I could....I am still not sure what you all use these "pot melts" for???????? Also, could someone post some new pictures under the photo section so that us newbies could see what they look like???? I could not get any of the old pictures under archives to come up....thanks a bunch....cannot wait to try.......cb

i just posted this elsewhere today

Ahhhhh, pretty....did you have the dichroic on the shelf and then the rest dripped down on it?

no.

i make the melt. grind it to the proper shape. cut the surrounding pieces to fit around it. full fuse. put the dichro pieces on top, and do a heavy tack fuse, then slump. there's a couple of sand blasting sequences in that, as i find the pot melts tend to devit a lot, and i wanted to clean up the back. the surrounding parts are transparent steel blue.

Charlie, I like that very much. Could you please explain further about cutting the pieces around it? Am I seeing 4 pieces? And do you have one full base? Or need to dam it? I've been wanting to do something with one of my pot melts if I can only decide which COE it may have been.

Becca wrote:Charlie, I like that very much. Could you please explain further about cutting the pieces around it? Am I seeing 4 pieces? And do you have one full base? Or need to dam it? I've been wanting to do something with one of my pot melts if I can only decide which COE it may have been.

yes.

the pot melt on this one is just over 1/4" thick, so it won't spread out very much, if at all. i traced around the melt onto my pattern since i ground it into an oval, then i cut 2 pieces of transparent steel blue, and two pieces of irid. the bottom is also 4 pieces of clear, but the breaks on the bottom piece don't lie under the breaks of the top pieces. when holding at full fuse, i go a little bit longer to ensure the melt will flatten out (since it will have a bump in the middle from the pot stem that got broken off), and fill out to the surrounding pieces. spray with borax, as it will devit.

since it never goes thicker than 2 layers of glass, you don't need dams. if the melt part winds up thicker than 1/4" the center will grow. in most cases i've seen of this, it actually grows in diameter between the two layers of glass, causing the piece to eventually be a bit thicker in the middle, also causing you to increase the annealing time to account for that. this is actually a very interesting effect if both the top and bottom are a transparent glass. it looks very organic, if it doesn't grow in a uniform manner. i haven't figured out how to do this reliably yet.

you can use a full base, but in that case, the center will be 3/8" thick, and just the center will spread. i've done this too, but you just have to take it into account when thinking about volume control, and also annealing time.

i usually sand blast the entire back of the piece before slumping, as the slump temp causes a nice matte finish when done.

Excellent explanation. Thank you Charlie.

CHARLIE....THANKS SOOOO MUCH...THAT BOWL IS BEAUTIFUL.....HAVE WONDERED THE WHOLE TIME WHAT EVERYONE WAS DOING WITH THESE POT MELTS...THEY SOUND SO INTERESTING, BUT I DO NOT NEED ANYTHING I CANNOT USE FOR SOMETHING.....ANY MORE IDEAS OUT THERE OR PICTURES"???????/

I have a few pictures posted at http://photos.yahoo.com/tomwhite2
Look in the experimental album. These are made using 30 grams of glass in the mini pot melt fixture shown in the same album. After cleaning up the back they are drilled using a Dremel drill press with a diamond bit while covered with 1/8" of water and used as necklace pendants.

Best wishes,
Tom in Texas

Hey Tom...thanks so much...they are great!!! I really love the hearts that you cast....I am really intrigued by the " drip cast" ones.....Is there somewhere that told you how to do those ( like in the archives) or a book or what??? or did you just experiment and learn how.....I am having so much fun with all of this and there is never ENOUGH TIME to just play....good luck and thanks for being sooooo helpful...cb