Honeycomb

01.

159 Pieces of Glass

In this strip-cut or on-edge project I’m using four colors: Cream, Lemon Lime, Dark Amber Tint, and Light Aquamarine.

02.

The Diagram

I drew some guidelines for the different colors and where they’ll go directly on the ThinFire shelf paper. I’ve also already got the top and left dams in place, with some 1/8″ fiber paper to keep the glass from sticking to the dams when it melts.

03.

A Bit on Edge

I began at the top left and started laying out the glass strips on edge. You’ll see that the opalescent cream is shorter  than the transparent glasses, which is by design.

04.

All Assembled

This is the entire platter, with all 159 pieces of glass, assembled on the kiln shelf and dammed on all four sides.

05.

Ready to Fuse

Here’s the shelf loaded into the kiln. With a judicious placement of the dams, I was able to put another project on the shelf too.

Below both pieces are fused.

06.

Needling

All the edges of the platter have small spikes of pointed glass, called needling. The molten glass wicks to the ceramic fiber paper. I coldworked the piece on a lapidary grinder starting at 60 grit (the harshest) up to 270 grit (a smooth matte finish). At this point, the piece is 5.5 x 10″ in size.

07.

Ready to Slump

After grinding the edges to a smooth, rounded matte finish, the platter is ready to slump.

Below is the final platter.