The latest glass project that I have been working on is done. Well, not quite done. It was done this morning, until I took it to work to show my boss, along with another piece, and chipped the bowl when the two pieces clanked together. Brought it back home and hand polished out the chip (it was small) and then sandblasted the top, because it got a couple of small scratches in it. It is back in the kiln for a fire polish to bring back the gloss somewhat from the sandblasting. It was not a good day for the bowl. And my boss wasn’t even there today. Go figure.
The following is a detail shot of the piece in progress, before it’s full fuse.
This is a much delayed posting of the finished piece from the previous postings about the process. It was quite a learning experience - definitely learned a lot longer hold at process temp is required for the way I had it set up. After the first full fuse I had lots of big bubbles, which a long hold would have taken care of. Second firing, smaller bubbles just on the surface, even though I looked at the end of process temp and couldn’t see anything. Third time was the charm as far as the bubbles were concerned, but I ended up with kiln brick dust on one corner. Used an electric angle grinder to take the surface down to get rid of the brick dust and noticed some scratches after polish that I hadn’t seen before. Left it to redo the next day, but the grinder semi refused to work for me the next day. Still haven’t gone back to fix it and the edges still need cold worked.
I love the ocean and water, in general, having grown up in southern California. Summers were spent either in the pool or at the beach. With this piece I wanted the feel of being in the water looking up at the ocean’s surface, with the bubbles of air rising to the top. I’m not done cold working this piece yet - the top and sides need more polishing. Plus it still needs it’s base, which will probably be black granite. Influenced by the work of Giles Bettison.
This took about 8 hours of sawing, hand sanding, sawing some more, and breaking billets! Now that was fun. I need to get a ball-peen hammer and not a regular one. Hopefully I don’t have too much glass in there - it “should” end up with a nice bull-nosed edge with a minimal amount of cold working. It should be done firing on Tuesday around noon. Fingers crossed that it isn’t full of bubbles. I’ve got so many different levels going on the my potmelt components that I’m worried about trapping lots of bubbles. I see from the photo that one of the pieces moved and is in a wonky position. Oh well - adds to the loosey-goosey feeling I was going for with this piece. This piece will actually be standing vertically and not the horizontal position of this picture.
Okay, so I’m getting into this blogging thing and decided to start a photo blog. Daily Vignette ”…a photo a day” was created so that I’ll be forced to learn how to really use my new camera. There are only two photos on there right now, since it was just started yesterday, but check in every day for a new one.
My inaugural photo:
The second stage of the piece that I am currently working on is now in the kiln, as of 10:50 p.m. It should be out of the kiln Saturday morning. After that, the bars will need to be sliced into smaller chunks of varying thicknesses. This photo shows the process of putting the bars together, with the aperture pour (which has been cut into 1/2″ thick slices) wrapped with different colors of strips that were glued in place for easy loading in the kiln. I need to do some cleaning - excuse the mess!!
The next photo shows the wrapped bars loaded in the kiln, each bar separated by some fiber paper (most of it previously used). When it comes out of the kiln on Saturday, the bars will need to be sandblasted, so I’m not worried about some of the fiber paper being too tall.
Part three on Saturday or Sunday!
