Jelly Beans from Leftovers

I've got lots of scrap glass.  It is taking over the limited work area I have.  Without weighing it, I'd guess there are at least 25 pounds of small scrap pieces.  When I cut a piece of glass I throw the cut offs that are irregular in shape or too small to store upright in old buckets.  I now have about 3 of these.  I think the buckets are from old ice cream containers from when the kids were little.  See - I never through "useful" things out.  They probably held two or three gallons of ice cream and have nice lids and handles.  Full of scrap they are in the ten pounds of glass range.

In a bit of a clean up mode a few weeks ago as I was packing up stuff to take with me to Corning.  I couldn't just throw all that scrap away.  The biggest bucket is of Spectrum 96 glass.  I'd built this very wonderful strip cutting machine which I blogged about previously.  I tried a few scraps and cut a bunch of half inch squares.  I got on a roll and had about a hundred in a few minutes.  Now what to do with them?  Well, glass wants to be 1/4" and round by its nature.  That spurred a thought.  Lay out the squares on a kiln shelf and get 'em hot.  One round 12" kiln shelf holds about three hundred squares.    

After several rounds of firing I had a small bag of these beans weighing about three pounds.  I did take pictures of them laying on a shelf - but my stupid camera phone munged the pictures.  I fired hot and fast and ran about four batches.  I ended up with a bag of glass jelly beans.  Square shapes make nice rounded half-domes.  Irregular shapes are interesting as well. Now I had to do something with them.  Here is a picture of some of the raw beans.

I have some nice fusing rings that fit in my small kiln.  I used a 10" ring here.  I found out in the first run that you really need to make sure to pack the beans so that they touch other beans in a couple of places.  Otherwise you'll get a few beans that aren't stuck together.  Here are pictures of the beans packed in the ring and a close up.

 

After fusing it comes out as a plate with lots of holes - very lacy effect.  Note that this version has two beans that didn't fuse.  There is one on the outer edge at the two o'clock position.  The other is harder to spot.

Final step was to slump the plate into a bowl.  I have a wonderful mold that fits my baby kiln.  I slumped it nicely but when opened the kiln you can see that the mold had CRACKED.  I don't like that, but the glass was fine - very strange.  Very costly.  

 

 This is a nice low bowl - not sure what I'll do with it, but it is much nicer as a present for someone rather than throwing it into the landfill.  From the top you can't see much, but from the side its rather nice.

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.

Casting - How do I Account for These Results?

The first results are in.  The first casting/fusing of the nice, cheap Guardian float glass is complete and I'm at a loss to explain what happened.  The first part of the story is here.  This first picture is a bucket of cullet.  It was approximately $4 for 40-50 pounds.  Great price.

Even in the bucket, this stuff looks great.  Even though it is a "float" glass, the type of glass used in windows, it doesn't show the usual greenish tint.  The picture below shows some pieces laid out on a paper towel, to give you an idea of how crystal clear it is.

So I piled up a bunch of this stuff in a 9" casting ring in the kiln.  It probably was a little over two inches high in most spots.  I knew it would melt down and I was going for about an inch and a half in thickness.  I understood that there would be lines and ghostly images where the various chunks where, but overall I thought I'd get a fairly transparent disc of glass.  Instead this is what I got.

This was melted at 1500 degrees (F) for 120 minutes.  The surface is quite bumpy still, and you can clearly see the outlines of every chunk of glass.  The texture is fairly smooth, and doesn't feel like devitrification, which in my experience is quite rough and "crackly".  The bottom is fairly smooth as shown below.

The bottom is a little closer to what I expected, but still it is very cloudy - not clear at all.  Anybody have any thoughts?  I haven't worked with float glass and am a little puzzled.

In the Frame

One late afternoon last summer in Marty Kremer's fusing workshop at Corning, I found myself having a lot of leftover pieces of glass and wanted to do something different.  I had an hour or so before dinner and really didn't want to start a typical strip cut piece.  This is what I came up with from the table scraps.  I finished most of it there, but finally got around to cleaning up the edges and taking a photo.  The photo really sucks but I didn't feel like getting out the tabletop photo tent, lights, and tripod.  So I just spread out a piece of wrinkled fabric and made a quick snapshot.

I had a bunch of white and clear strips left and was playing around with them.  I thought that the alternating patter of the clear and white made a nice pattern and a reminded me of matting on a picture.  That spawned the idea of framing something interesting.  

The pattern bars are actually four strips of a communal pattern "sheet" we made in the class.  That was interesting.  We set up a 20" square on a kiln shelf and surrounded it with kiln furniture.  That was lined with fiber paper.  Then the class went to town in the scrap bins filling the interior with random cuts and colors about 2" thick.  I've done a lot of bars, but never had seen a sheet done like this.  The result was a little less than an inch thick and 20" square.  That was sliced up into half inch thick bars, 20" long.  I selected a few that I thought had a cool pattern and graduation of warm to cool colors.  

Two pairs of book matched strips were then laid down.  The original intent was to fill up the interior of this frame with the pattern bars, but even I couldn't take the jumble of color.  I settled on the two pairs you see here.  There was still an open area and I was getting hungry.  There was a nice piece of chartreuse but not nearly enough.  Rather than cut up in strips, which I knew wouldn't be enough, nor have the look I wanted, I opted to lay it flat.  This is only one layer of chartreuse and there were three layers of clear underneath it.  

Due to the way we were loading kilns, I think this one got bumped a little.  I had to trim the border a little so it isn't perfect, but it's OK.  I had a lot of kiln furniture surrounding the borders, but I probably should have used a little more.  I slumped it in a low square bowl mold and was very pleased.  The wrinkles of the fabric are a little distracting in this picture, but otherwise the photo does show the transparency, which is what I was hoping for.

Control Panel

I'm slowly going through all the stuff I've made and deciding what to do with it.  This is an example of that issue.  This piece I made during on of my workshops at Corning.  

 Well, I should say I made the pieces/parts at Corning and fused it at home.  This is a quick reference picture.  I didn't realize when I took this picture that I'd cut the corners off the picture.  You aren't missing anything as I got almost all of it.  The doughnuts were a somewhat failed effort to do a rollup of a fused panel and then pull that down into a cane that would in turn be cut into a bunch of murrine (how the heck do you spell that any way?).  I wanted the holes in the middle, that much worked.  However I got lots of variation in the diameter of the pulled cane.  This meant some of the bits were larger or smaller than the others.  

The other thing I should have done is bevel the edge of the blank form.  If you look closely, there isn't enough white to completely encircle the rings.  And I think there is a duplicate red - another lesson learned.  Have opposite colors at either end of the blanks.  

Oh well, I spread a bunch of them out on the table and I got the impression of gears.  That in turn made me think of a crazy, Frankenstein-esque control panel.  I laid this out on a scrap bit of aventurine green (sparkly).  Then with a bunch of scraps of other glass and bits, I set up this panel.  I couldn't get it fused while there, so I did it when I got home.  I wanted these to be tacked on, not nearly as much as it ended up.  I kinda like the look, but some of the random bits melted too much.  

Overall I think it's pretty cool.  Note the "signature cane" I made.  The "J" just seems to fit.  I may make some more letters for use in the future.  I am envisioning some sort of much larger piece where this control panel is just one part.  That assembly hasn't been worked out in my feeble mind yet, just another thing I could do if I have the time, energy, money, desire, drive, support, tools, techniques, skills...

Retrospective

I can't believe it's been almost five days since I left Corning for the long drive back to the Ann Arbor, Michigan area.  It was pretty uneventful - thankfully.  I found myself dozing off, especially on the long slog through New York.  No traffic and dead tired.  I had to stop several times for five minute cat-naps.  That is something I never do.  Must be getting old.

I don't have any updated pictures since I had to unpack and immediately turn around the next morning and prepare for a business trip to Houston.  I hope to update the pictures this weekend so stay tuned.

I titled this post "Retrospective" as that is what I did a lot of during the drive - at least when I was awake.  Some workshops I've attended, I come home with finished projects, others I come home with nothing.  Here I came away with a new found understanding of processes that can be used to combine warm glass work (fusing), hot glass work (pulling cane, glass blowing), and finally cold work (grinding, polishing) into one finished piece.  I can hear my inner self saying "it's not about the destination, it's about the journey".  How true in this case.  

The other thing I learned is a new way to break down glass objects that involve patterns into their component parts and combine in new and interesting ways.  I'm not sure where my work will take me - that is part of the inner retrospection that I need to do.  I like the things I've learned but now it's time to put them into action.  

That last part became clear to me.  One of the most exciting things that happened during the week at Corning didn't have anything to do with the workshop.  I actually sold three pieces to the Glass Market at the Museum which they will be offering for sale.  I took a bunch of pieces, as it was unclear what they were looking for based on the initial meeting last summer.  I was a little surprised at the pieces they chose.  Glad I had a selection.  I'm waiting to see what happens and if they want additional pieces if these sell.  It became clear that being good at something isn't enough.  You have to develop your own personal style.  The "Rothko" pieces I sold to the Glass Market are unique.  I combined a lot of techniques that I've seen or learned into a simple, yet complex piece of glass that others are not making. 

My goal is to figure out how to incorporate the newly learned processes into unique pieces that people want to own.

Strips, Strips Strips - Day 1 with Giles Bettison at Corning

Made it through the first day in the workshop with Giles.  Day one is all about cutting strips.  And more cutting.  And more cutting.  The goal was to make about a 3" x 3" x 5" stack of strips that had simple patterns in them.  We will tack fuse them tonight while they are heating up overnight and be ready to pull into long canes tomorrow morning.  We use Bullseye glass with has a 90 COE.  Bullseye has some great colors.  I tried to use a variety of both transparent and opaque glass to be able to see the effects.  The goal will be to pull this into cane about 1" square or maybe a little less.

Here are some pictures of some the stacks I made today.  The first picture shows some of the strips ready to be stacked.  The next two pictures are two are of the same stack, just different views to get some sense of the size.  The last two are of two other stacks.

 

Now What?

I guess I've been lucky in that I've never really seen much devitrification in my glass work. I think this piece has it - in spades. That is the problem, but first the background. I took Marty Kremer's workshop at Corning this summer. That was a great time and I learned a great deal. We did a lot of strip cutting to use in our work during the week. One of the other participants had some leftovers and gave me a dozen or so strips that were made with stringer and confetti. They were quite nice, but I never really knew what I was going to make with them.

I'd been playing with them in various configurations since early August. I was never quite happy. I had them laying around on the workbench and was complaining to my wife that I knew there was a great piece in the strips, but I was having a hard time finding it. As I laid several of the strips side by side, she remarked that it reminded her of the Native American fabric weavings. I knew what to do.

Rather than stack the strips vertically, laying them horizontally was the key. I put a strip of black iridized glass face down, then a strip of a color - in this case white, black, yellow, and orange were used, a strip of clear, and finally the magic stringer/confetti strip on top. This made 4 layers or about a half an inch thick blank. I was using a 12" diameter ring mold. This is where problem #1 starts. The first picture shows the set up in the kiln.

I have a small kiln at home. It is about 13.5" across, and its a weird 7 sided shape. I thought the round kiln shelves were 13" in diameter. I set the ring down on the kiln shelf and it fit perfectly. However "perfect" in this case meant dropping down around the sides of the shelf and not sitting on it. Crap... I had a piece of fiber or vermiculite board that I'd intended as a kiln shelf but never used. This was gifted from a friend and I wasn't sure of the composition but decided to chop down the corners into a roughly septagonal shape (7 sides-ish). So far, so good. Note that the ring just fits on the shelf - the picture could lead you to believe that the piece is hanging off the left edge.

I laid up the strip construction staring across the diameter of the piece. This turned out to be a good idea. Soon I realized that I actually didn't have enough of the stringer/confetti strips to do the entire piece. In comes problem #2. I was about 4 long strips short. I decided to fill in with a solid color and used a turquoise color that matched some of the stringer color. Nice southwest feel. Finally I had the piece constructed and felt good about the blank.

Into the kiln and all went well. The next morning I opened the kiln and saw a couple of issues. First, the turquoise areas were distracting. The lines between the strips in the pattern area disappeared, but they were there in the turquoise. I knew better. I could have used flat sheets in this area. But that wasn't the worst problem. The surface seemed to be covered with scum. I've never seen anything like it. I was stumped. I guess it is devitrification. But why. My current thinking is that there is something from the new kiln shelf/board that came out when it was fired. I later found out that the board was "new" and had never been fired. Are there some kind of binders that gassed off? Who knows.

The back is quite interesting - in fact, it may be more interesting than the front. These strips all came from the same sheet of Bullseye. I really haven't done much with iridized glass so wasn't expecting the "coats of many colors" look.

Anyway, my dilemma now is what to do with it. Getting rid of devit will require sandblasting and then fire-polishing - which I can do. Are there other things that could/should be considered. Should I cut off the turquoise and create an interesting shape when it is slumped? Or just turn it over and use the iridized surface?

Now what?

Recycled

My wife claims I'm a hoarder. I don't think I am. Especially not after seeing the crazy TV shows about clean houses, hoarders living in/with cat feces, and the like. But I do tend to keep a lot of stuff around that I might, however little that chance might be, use sometime in the future.

This piece shows how I used two of those carefully packed away "treasures". I'd been glass blowing for a while, but wanted something I could work with at home. Blowing glass at home isn't for the faint of heart nor the weak of wallet. So I got a little 13" octagon kiln and started playing with fused glass.

One of the very first pieces we made was a slumped plate using a lot of scrap strips on a transparent green base. I say we - as in "my wife and I", she was all gung ho at first, but she lost interest pretty quick. Once it was fused and slumped the plate wasn't all that wonderful. It was dog-boned in as we'd heated too long, too high temperature, and all the other myriad mistakes one makes when starting out. It was an OK plate, but it fell into one of my "I have a use for this someday" tubs.

On a side note, I keep everything in those blue plastic tubs you get at any of the big box stores these days. I watch for sales and bought them by the dozen. I have about 20 of these filled with Christmas decorations, and another half a dozen or so filled with the outdoor holiday decorations. These are not part of the "Jeff hoards everything" collection. There are about 30 or so tubs stacked in the pole barn - they do stack quite well - filled with "stuff".

Another item in one of the "cool glass things I may use one day" tubs, is the small pyramid shown in the picture above. I cast this in a mold I have out of glass powders. I should have known better but it shrank quite a bit as the powders melted. I knew that. But it didn't turn out quite as big as I wanted - can't even remember the project it was going to be used for anyway - so I put it away for future contemplation.

I found the two items one day and had this crazy thought - could I fuse the pyramid to the plate. So I sawed off the dog-boned edges of the plate, turning a 12" square into about a 10.5" square but was able to save the pattern. I loaded the plate in the kiln on the slumping mold and contemplated the firing schedule. I was worried about the pyramid deforming and that would just be ugly. I set the thing to ramp up very slowly and go to a very low tack fuse point. I then watched it carefully to make sure it didn't deform. The piece had to have a very long anneal cycle. So I waited patiently until the next day and it did survive. There is some slight rounding on the edges of the pyramid, but not too bad. The pyramid is solidly fused to the plate. I can't tell if there is significant stress, but its been through about 9 months of sitting out on the shelf, including two periods of no heat (don't ask), and seems to be surviving OK.

It will probably end up back in the "what the heck I'm I going to do with this thing" tub pretty soon as it still isn't one of my favorite pieces, but it did show the way for some sculptures I've been pondering.
Anyway, I found it

Wondering What to do...Revisited

In the last post I explained a bowl I was pondering. I was thinking of sandblasting parts of the bowl and rim to give a matte effect. I finally quit procrastinating this past weekend and polished the rim of the piece. I haven't taken any pictures yet to post, but I really like the look. It isn't a high-gloss polish like optical crystal glass can impart, but it does give a more finished look.

I never intended this piece to take so long to get to a finished state. I'm still not sure if it's there. I'm calling it "complete", at least for now. I know I'll revisit it sometime later. I need to move on to other projects.

I'll post a "finished" picture next time I get the camera, tripod, light box, photo tent, extension cords, and most importantly, the time to take some better quality images.

Wondering What to Do...

This bowl is driving me a little crazy. I made the basic bowl during Marty Kremer's workshop at Corning this year. See my previous post about that workshop here. This is a quick and dirty photo to show what I'm talking about. The left half of the bowl is clear and the right half is glossy white.

I made the pattern bars that run down the center at home before I went to Corning. There I created a round blank by laying up strips of white and clear, along with the pattern bar, in a 12" round shape. Once this was fired, I realized how nice the piece was turning out. The blank was then slumped into a mold with fairly steep sides.

That was the easy part.

I really like the wide mouth/lip/whatever you call it look and proceeded to saw off and grind the lip. That is where I stopped and the consternation started. You see, I really had intentions of sandblasting the front and back, giving the whole piece a frosted look, except for the pattern bar area down the middle. The photo doesn't quite show it, but the piece is very shiny except for the lip where it was ground. I'd then use the goop mentioned in my post to make it have a nice satin finish.

But I really liked the shiny look for this piece. I really didn't want to "ruin" the piece by sandblasting. So the dilemma continues. I think I'm going to polish the rim to a high polish and see what the optics do. If that doesn't seem right, then I can always sandblast.

Help!

Making it Clean and Nice

One of the qualities of glass is that it is nice and shiny. Somethings this isn't what you want. You want a nice uniform matte surface. To me this is best achieved by sandblasting. However when you sandblast you get a nice surface, but one that is prone to showing fingerprints and other kinds of dirt quite easily. Cleaning is hard and tends to leave a lot of lint stuck in/on the glass regardless of the type of cloth you use to wash and/or dry it with. People have been trying all sorts of surface protectants for years with varying results. Some are pretty cheap and easy to find around the house. ArmorAll, Pledge, Rain-X, and other products have been used. None of these suited my tastes, but at least protected against some of the fingerprint oils. Liquid Lustre is another specialized one but is very, very expensive so I've only seen it used by others. I wasn't impressed.

At my recent workshop at Corning one of the participants in another session brought a product that we all were impressed with. Its called " Clean Shield® GEL - Shower, Tub & Tile Protectant" and is made by the Unelko Corporation. I couldn't find it in stores locally but is available for order on their website at $6.95 per tube, which should cover quite a few pieces. The shipping and handling for two tubes was over $9.00 so I wish I could find it locally.



Here is a picture of one of the pieces I made during the glass. It has been fused, cut and ground, and then sandblasted. Note the nice surface it leaves. You squeeze out a small pea-sized amount of the gel and work it in with the reusable lint-free cloth provided with the product. I suspect it will last for quite a while and a quick wipe with a cloth removes any dust without really disturbing the surface.

Workshop at CMOG (Corning Museum of Glass)

On a countdown until I leave for beautiful Corning, New York and another week long session at The Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass. My glassblowing friend and I try to attend one or two weeks of workshops a year. This year we are taking a class from world-renowned fusing artist Marty Kremer. Be sure to check out his website.

Martin Kremer

Here is the description of the class from the class catalog:

Within the Walls

This technique-intensive workshop will focus on the potential for expression and discovery between the inside and outside of a vessel. Working with the bowl form, the class will explore the intended and the unexpected in "windows" through the vessel wall. Students will learn how to make and use different types of pattern bars, torch-worked elements, and prepared glass (painted, fritted and powdered, and confettied) as inclusions. Various surface techniques also will be explored.

Martin Kremer has been working with glass for more than 30 years. His current work includes large sculptures, which have been featured in museum and gallery shows, and a wide range of glass bowls and platters, which are shown at galleries internationally. He has studied blown and fused glass at the Penland School of Crafts, Urban Glass, and The Studio.

I can't wait. I leave on Sunday morning a little over a week from now. The long eight hour drive is worth it. Although the one time I went in January and there was a foot and a half of blinding snow. Driving through the mountains wasn't very pleasant at all. A summer drive is much nicer.

I've been creating pattern bars, rollout blanks, and other stuff for use in the class. I don't know exactly what we'll end up doing in the class. Each time I come prepared, we end up doing something completely different - and very wonderful - than what I expected.

Stay tuned for updates - I'll try to post during the evenings after class, but usually only get about six hours of sleep during the session so who knows...