01.
Some Planning Needed
This long platter is going to have 262 strips of glass in it, in four colors, in a complicated pattern. A diagram to help guide the placement comes in super handy.
02.
Layout Almost Complete
Once the first handful of rows are laid down, the rest are much easier. The pencil lines, drawn directly on the ThinFire shelf paper (which keeps the glass from sticking to the shelf) helped a lot. The project is constructed with three dams (with ceramic fiber between the glass and the dams) to keep everything from moving and keep it nice and square.
03.
Gaps
Looking from the top, you can see that the pattern calls for gaps where there is no glass. When it melts, it will flow into these empty spaces. You can also see how the red and yellow glass is taller than the white. That’s also deliberate, so that they flow over the white. Note also the clear glass to the right. It’s a striker and will change to orange during fusing.
05.
Into the Kiln
This strip cut project is ready to fuse.
Below you see the fused piece. Note the orange glass at the left and right which has attained its color after reaching the full fuse temperature.
06.
Take a Powder
Some of the red glasses (though not all) are not food safe because of the cadmium (more than 0.5%) that they contain. I put a layer of clear powder on the fused piece to create a layer of clear glass on top of the red and fuse it a second time. It’s imperceptible in the finished product and gives me peace of mind.
I neglected to mention that I also coldworked this piece after the first fusing to remove the rough edges left by the ceramic fiber separator. I used the large lapidary grinding wheel at Bullseye Glass’s Pasadena studio.
Results
Final Result
I adore the vibrant palette of this piece, like a summer sunset encoded. Next, the other seasons!
Close-up
You can see how the taller colored strips of glass have flowed over the white just enough to leave a thin white line showing. It’s a wonderful effect that turns small rectangles of glass into something that looks organic.
FULL FUSING SCHEDULE (RUN TIME 11:57, 20.5 KWH)*
SEGMENT | RATE (deg F / hour) | TEMPERATURE (F) | HOLD (hours:minutes) |
1 | 250 | 1225 | :30 |
2 | 250 | 1500 | :15 |
3 | AFAP | 900 | 2:00 |
4 | 100 | 700 | OFF |
FULL FUSING SCHEDULE FOR POWDER (RUN TIME 10:26, 17. KWH)*
SEGMENT | RATE (deg F / hour) | TEMPERATURE (F) | HOLD (hours:minutes) |
1 | 250 | 1250 | :45 |
2 | 600 | 1450 | :20 |
3 | AFAP | 900 | 1:00 |
4 | 100 | 700 | OFF |
SLUMP FUSING SCHEDULE (RUN TIME 10:43, 15.0 kWH)*
SEGMENT | RATE (deg F / hour) | TEMPERATURE (F) | HOLD (hours:minutes) |
1 | 200 | 1250 | :15 |
2 | AFAP | 900 | 2:00 |
3 | 100 | 700 | OFF |
* The firing schedules may be designed for other projects that were fired with this one. Everything was fired in a Paragon GL-22AD.