WarmGlass.com

Hi
Happy new year everybody.
The piece I am showing went into the kiln in 2020, came out this morning - 2021. I am posting the front and the back sides. Please, if you do not really like it - do not 'like' it. It is a kiln-pressed piece, it thickness is 1 [one!] millimeter... Its size is 27 by 28 c'm

I have a problem with this piece.
If you look properly on the front side, you might see a tiny dent on the yellow right side of the piece. It is not followed by a crack. I suspect that it happenned because of an air bubble that exploded. I want to proect the piece from cracking, do you have an suggestions how to do it??? [one way is to fuse it to a background, perhaps there are other options? ]

Many THanks in advance.

Interesting piece Havi. I can't think of any way to protect it other than fusing it to a thicker piece but there are lots of far more experienced members who may have better ideas. If you could control what is going to happen in the kiln when pressing the glass you may be able to make interesting, atmospheric, veils of colour to then lay over already-painted and fired pieces.

Happy New Year to you, too.

I have had some luck flipping a piece over and refiring. It's worth a try.

Brad Walker wrote:I have had some luck flipping a piece over and refiring. It's worth a try.

Me to.
The other Jim

Thanks,
Brad and Jim
please excuse my limited understanding.
Should I re-fire the piece thru the whole process of kiln-pressing?
If not, if you mean regular firing, what temprature should I reach??

And then what? The back side will be fire polished, while I could sift some powder and fire polish the front...

I do not plan to form the piece. No slumping of anything.

Please excuse my silly questions, I really NEED to understand and know, even at the price of appearing stupid.

Many thanks,
H.

I guess it depends on what you'd like to accomplish with the piece. Generally, flipping and re-firing helps the most when you have divots or other areas that are irregular. You can make that work either smooshing again or just by flipping and then fusing to around 1400 to 1450F / 760 to 790 C. If you smoosh again, the design will change somewhat -- most likely, it will spread out a bit more at the edges. If you just flip and re-fire in a normal fuse, then it should smooth out the dented area, but you'll need to re-flip and re-fire a second time if you want that side to be on top and shiny. When I re-fire smooshed pieces to shine them up, I usually sandblast first, then fire to around 1400F/760C. Sifting powder on top would shine up also, but you may need to go a bit hotter than that. And the piece may get a little thicker, but the design would stay the same.

Hope this helps some. It's hard to know exactly what to recommend without actually seeing the piece.

Thanks , Brad



had to look for the meaning of "divots". in order to answer you.
The piece is absolutely flat, so there is no need to flip and fire.

Decided to keep it as is, for the time being.

Anyhow thanks for the lesson

Havi