The World's Tallest Vase?

I don't have pictures yet, as the piece is still in the annealer.  It certainly won't be the world's tallest, but it will be the tallest piece I've ever made.  Or is it the longest?  Either way it is big.  

So what is "IT"?

I was glassblowing yesterday, during my normal time slot.  I am making a new series of tall vases (vessels?) that have curved, swooping tops.  Not entirely ready to post pictures, nor do I have the ability to make a decent picture of them.  Anyway, the first piece I made was a very nice vase about 16" tall.  The only problem is that is was very plain and had pretty thick walls.  I was having a little bit of trouble and accidentally bumped the pipe ever so slightly.  BONK.  The piece hit the floor.  It survived and I thought I could rescue it.  Rather than just putting it into the annealer - it would have been a good piece of "Flintstone-ware", or a good blank for carving and sandblasting.  But no, I was going to be a hero and re-punty the thing and finish it according to plan.  Almost made it too.  Got very near the end and the cold spot where it was resting on the floor for a few seconds cracked.  Oh well - 45 minutes wasted.

The second piece was much nicer.  I followed the same steps, but this time things were looking up.  However, another problem occurred.  I put bases on the tallish vessels.  This is done with a "cookie foot", basically a patty of glass.  Now I've made hundreds of them and usually pretty good.  This time I wasn't.  I did some things to correct it, but it wasn't going to be one of my best pieces.  My glass blowing partner, John, said "Keep working, you never know how it will look finished, and you can cold work it later".  OK, keep pushing through the piece.  

It was very hot and humid yesterday, actually the entire last two months, and I just wanted to finish the piece.  To stretch the neck, you get it pretty hot and swing it out.  I wasn't paying attention and got it rip roaring hot.  Usually, I don't work that hot as it is easy to lose control of the piece.  I started the stretch and it was going quite well.  Going fast, too.  I kept letting it drop down.  The base of the piece is six or seven inches across and the neck tapers down to about an inch and a half.  And there is a lot of neck.  Kinda like a giraffe.  There is a a wide mouth at the very top which is probably three inches wide.

Getting it knocked off the pipe was a lot easier than I thought.  Getting it into the annealer wasn't.  The annealer is about 54" long and 24" wide, and pretty deep.  There were already some big pieces in there so there was about 48" of length to put the piece.  I put it in and it didn't fit.  I had to lean it up against the far wall.  At least I avoided placing it against the elements!  I don't think it'll slump, but who knows.

I have no idea if the thing will even stand up, or be worth finding a way to stabilize it.  But it sure was fun, and it rates a story here.  A real conversation piece.

It's Corning Time Again

Time is fast approaching for my semi-annual trek to one of the mother land's of glass and glass instruction - The Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass.  I've been accepted into Daniel Clayman's "Mold Making for Glass Casting" workshop.  Here is what the official description of the session 

This course is intended for sculptors wanting to explore kiln-casting glass using plaster molds. Students will explore the how and the why of a broad array of casting concerns. Using the students' work as a platform for demonstrations, the course will cover a range of topics, including mold recipes, wax-working techniques, rubber mold making, glass sources, kiln requirements, and more. Students may make an object or two, but the emphasis will be on learning the process, not leaving with completed objects. 

The description also says some sculpting skills required.  I'm not entirely convinced right now of this.  Of course, this is what I always think prior to attending a workshop!

I've known about this since early May.  Every week I've thought about what I want to make / learn in the session.  But there always seemed to be time for it later.  Well, looking at the calendar, I have a little over two weeks to get off my butt and get ready.  

As inspiration, I'm posting this picture which was in the Corning catalog for the summer sessions this year.

I'm not going this big or anything close.  We've been limited to a size of about 6" on a side.  Given we only have a week, casting anything larger isn't feasible. 

Time to get going... 

What a "Fair"

I've been attending the "Ann Arbor Art Fair" for 35 years now.  I put it in quotes as there isn't one fair, but a whole bunch - four official fairs, and a bunch of offshoots, street and parking lot vendors, etc.  I've always gone on Friday afternoons of the four day, Wednesday to Saturday, event.  In fact, I met my wife on a rainy Friday evening during the fair a long time ago.   But that is another story.

The whole month of July here in southeast Michigan can be classified with one word - "HOT".  The fourth week of July is usually pretty warm, but this year it was significantly hotter than usual.  The heat index Friday afternoon was at about 105 degrees (F).  That is pretty hot.  It was high 90's plus very high humidity.  Not really looking forward to walking around outside on the asphalt streets and amongst the throngs of people.  But we went.  

We knew we wouldn't see everything.  In the old days we could spend five or six hours walking around and seeing almost everything.  These days as walking gets harder and the stamina falters, we have to pick and choose.  Given the heat, we changed up our usual route.  After 35 years, you have a game plan and routes that let you see the most without backtracking.  We saw some interesting stuff and spend about two and a half hours slowly moving through the streets.  

One thing that has me puzzled though is how little new there was.  Back in the "good old days" - 80's and 90's - it seemed like there was always something new, or at least something that you saw a lot of people buying.  I really am tired of seeing the same photographs, paintings, ceramic pots, jewelry, and even glass.  We haven't bought any art in probably the last five years.  Some years we'd come back with half a dozen items, some years it would be that one piece that really grabbed us.  But we don't seem to find that any more.

I had rained earlier in the day on Friday, and there was a strong wind storm on Thursday night.  One of the streets is known as "tornado alley" as the winds really play havoc with the tents.  I heard a lot of people lot work who hadn't prepared properly for that condition.  I remember one year we were on tornado alley when the winds and rain came.  I remember the sounds of glass breaking and the sight of tents flying down the street.  It was really bad.  I don't have exact statistics, but we know in our hearts that it will rain during the fair on Friday.  It may be a small shower or heavy downpour but it WILL RAIN.  

We were tired and sweaty around five o'clock so we decided just to go to dinner.  We have a favorite Greek place that we always go to.  Since we were on the other side of the town due to changing up our route, we got in the car and tried to drive over.  Parking on that side of town wasn't looking good and we just decided to go to the Red Lobster out by where we live.  The air conditioning in the car sure felt good.  Then about five minutes later the heavens opened up.  There was the "art fair downpour" we'd been expecting.  It was fun watching the people scurry like cockroaches when you turn the lights on!  I know that feeling - we've been there too many times to count.  It only lasted 10 minutes but really did help cool down.

Get into the restaurant and then the lights go out.  It was only about 10 seconds and they were back on, but then another storm came.  This one was much bigger and the winds were very strong.  That one lasted about 30 minutes and since we were inside weren't paying much attention.  Driving home the six miles you could tell that the closer we got to home, the worse it was.  There were trees and leaves and branches and trash cans everywhere.  Pulling into the driveway it looked like a war zone.  Of course, there was no power.  It was still very hot, and now really humid.  I didn't see much damage until I went to the far side of the house and saw this.

  
There was a nice 12 foot high ornamental flowering cherry tree in this area, now it is tangled up with some branches that fell from the 70 foot oak trees that are nearby. The clean up task will begin.  There are leaves and branches everywhere.  I suspect it'll be a couple of weeks before things look normal again.

Happy Belated Birthday - Glass Musings!

I was planning on posting this a little bit closer to the actual day when I celebrated one year of writing this blog.  Like everything else this summer, I haven't done much blogging.  This is one of the strangest summers in a long time.  The heat and humidity, along with the raft of thunderstorms and tornadoes have left me in a mood to not do very much.  Thus, I'm two weeks past due in celebrating.  

July 5, 2009 was the first post.  My intent was to post a few times per week.  I posted 66 entries in 52 weeks - actually 54 weeks given the delay.  That works out to 1.2 posts per week.  Far short of the 2 or 3 I planned.  Looking back, I started off pretty good, got some good spurts in, and now have lost steam.  I don't see that coming as a result of not wanting to continue to write about my adventures in glass land, just a reality that I have a lot of things to do.  Glass has taken a back seat since early this spring and thus everything related has fallen by the wayside.  

I plan on writing more in the coming days and weeks.  I know I've said that before, but I have a few unfinished projects that I need to complete.  I have some new blown glass work that I'm pretty happy with as well.  Stay tuned.  

What Happened - A Frustrating Result

Well, here is a really strange result.  I created a strip-cut blank and a incorporated some of the murrine tiles I made a while ago.  It is all made from Bullseye glass so I'm pretty sure it is all compatible.  I spent several hours cutting the strips, alternating clear and opaque ones which looked really nice when setting up the layout.  I used murrine that had clear glass centers surrounded by an amber brown color.  These made little windows or stepping stones across the piece.  

I fused the blank in a 12" ring.  It came out perfectly - just as I expected.  I got some new slumping molds for Father's Day.  One was the deep sided bowl.  This is a 12" diameter mold across the top but only a few inches deep.  This should have worked perfectly in my small kiln.  In a nutshell - IT DIDN'T.  

The picture above is what I saw when I opened the kiln.  I peeked when the piece was heating up to make sure everything was OK.  At a little over 1000 degrees (F) it was perfectly fine.  It was late so I went to bed, around midnight, knowing that it would take most of the night and the next morning to slump, anneal, and cool.  

A couple of notes, I had a good kiln wash on the mold.  I was happy and it was uniform.  Note that the glass came out perfectly fine from the mold and only had a slight dusting of kiln wash residue which wiped right off.  The blank was perfectly centered in the opening and was very level.  The mold has an indented bottom on the outside so I didn't think it needed to be up off the kiln floor.  The only other thing which is a little unusual is the placement of the thermocouple.  It is about 3/8" from the side of the mold.  It isn't touching the mold but its placement meant I had to keep the entire set up slightly off center in the kiln.

Here is a more close up picture of the break.  Note that the piece seems to have slid down the sides of the mold unevenly as one side is higher in the mold than the other.
 
 
I used the following schedule which I felt was conservative.  I peeked in the morning when the temperature was about 750 and the piece was cracked.

Step   Rate    Temp (F)   Hold
  1      100      1000         60
  2      240      1240         30
  3      9999     900          180
  4      50        700           0

The picture below is a close up of the crack from the underside.  Note that it is very smooth and fire polished.

 So I'm really at a loss to explain why this happened.  It isn't a compatibility issue that I can see.  All the white, red, and clear strips where full length strips so there was no piecing together.  Seems to me that since the edges of the crack are smooth that the piece cracked sometime after the 1000F mark but before the full fuse.  

Help?  Thoughts?  Ideas?

I'm Not Dead!

I've been busy.  This past five weeks have been pretty crazy.  I realized it had been over a month since I'd posted.  In fact, it has been five weeks for both posting and glass in general.  Wanted to drop a note here to say "I'm not dead".  I'm alive and kicking.  Not much happening in glass, though.  

I am trying some new things in blown glass.  Some really tall, thin necked pieces.  I hope to take some pictures this weekend and I'll post those.  In the fusing world, I made one piece in the past month using the "strip" method.  No - get your mind out of the gutter - it doesn't have to do with taking off ones clothes.  It is the method of cutting lots of strips of glass, standing them on edge, and using them to make interesting patterns.  I used some of the murrine I made this winter.  I'll never get used to how many strips you need for a piece.  It took a lot more time (and glass) to make the blank.  I haven't slumped it yet and don't have a picture.  Again, that is on the plate for this weekend.

By the way, the title of this post, "I'm not dead", comes from one of my favorite movies - "Chilly Scenes of Winter".   Here is the link from the Internet Movie Database.  Note that they've changed the name to "Head Over Heels" which makes no sense.  The classic line comes from the mother, played by Gloria Grahame, who always responds to her son's question, "How are you?" with "I'm not dead".  I've loved that line since 1979 when the movie first came out.

Floating Away

Been quite busy lately and haven't had time to post.  A while ago, I posted about some float (window) glass that a buddy of mine obtained quite cheaply.  You can follow that thread here and the first test results here.  I certainly was amazed by the results which wasn't at all what I expected.  I posted my results and asked some questions over at the Warm Glass forum.  The answers told me that I should have expected the results.  But I wasn't happy.  The holy grail of cheap clear casting glass was theoretically in my sights and I wasn't giving up quite so easily.

Off to the kiln for round two.  Since the first test wasn't flat, and took way too long to grind, I decided to fire the test piece longer and hotter.  The test pieces are 8" rings about 1" thick.  This is something that easily fits in my little kiln, doesn't take forever, and is easily repeatable.  I doubled the length of time for the melt and added 150 degrees to the top temperature.  Glass I'm used to would have been in a puddle on the floor at those times and temperatures.  Here is a picture of the second test.

N

Now this is strange.  It's hard to see in this picture but the glass went completely milky white.  The previous piece had "veils", but this piece is completely opaque.  It was definitely flatter, but certainly isn't smooth.  The bottom was pretty good, but this still has a long way to go before I could say I have an 8" flat disc.  My guess right now is that even longer/hotter wouldn't get where I want to be.

That left another test to do.  What if I took the glass, crushed it into frit, and then cast that.  That is a good way to work with other types of glass.  So I put a bunch of the float cullet in the kiln, heated it up to about 1100F, and then quenched the hot pieces in a bucket of water.  This sets up a bunch of internal fractures in the pieces, but they don't shatter immediately.  Hitting them with a hammer creates a fairly uniform gravel (frit).  The best way to describe it, is that they are like fat grains of rice. 

I weighed the first test piece which was 2.5 pounds.  I then weighed out the same amount of the frit, so I'd have a good comparison.  Of course, the frit mounds up as there is quite a bit of air spaces in between each of the grains.  It should all melt down flat.  Off to the kiln with a schedule that I thought would work, based on previous frit casting.  Boy was I surprised.

The picture is sort of out of focus, so sorry for that.  But you get the idea.  This looks like the surface of piece of sandpaper enlarged a hundred times!  This isn't flat, not even close.  However the color is much more uniform, even if it is white.  That I expected based on previous frit casting with transparent glass.  I wasn't ready for the surface texture.  Longer and hotter for this piece is needed as well.  

Finally, I had a friend polish the first test piece.  This is quite nice.  I like the veiling effect, but you certainly see the shape outline of the original cullet.

Well, its off to consider other options and tests.