FuseNews

Originally published in Stained Glass News issue #59 Feb. 2003

I experiment a lot, its fun. This is often what I do. It seems like all of my glass work falls into one or more of the following three categories; finished work for others, finished work for me and experiments. All three are rewarding but the experiments take the most time and I seem to get the most out of them. To me experimenting is a form of practice. A musician wouldn't dream of performing in public without practicing their instrument enough to become proficient, yet for some reason, people think they can just go out and make perfect glass on the first try.

It just amazes me how little people are willing to experiment. My favorite, and this is really common, is the person that calls and they have an expensive disaster and they are just hoping that it is my fault. They had this great idea so they went out and bought some really expensive glass, they had never done anything this complex or large before, yet they just know it would be perfect, but it doesn't turn out perfect on the first try. They are disappointed, frustrated and looking for someone or something to blame. In most cases all of the problems that occur could have been anticipated and solved if only they had been willing to experiment a bit first, but no, not them.

They got bubbles under the glass, but they didn't experiment with firing large pieces of glass to determine how to avoid bubbles, so it is the shelf primers fault. A particular color of glass changed color when it was fired, they are shocked by the change, yet they didn't test fire the glass first to see how it would behave in the kiln and now it is the glass companies fault that their piece is a failure. They didn't want their expensive glass to devitrify and have a scummy surface, so they bought some overglaze. The problem is they didn't experiment to find out how to use the product, so they either put it on to thick, or used a dirty brush or didn't clean the glass well before hand or they didn't fire it hot enough and now their piece has a filmy surface and they go tell everyone how the overglaze ruined they master piece. You get the picture?

I have fused glass long enough to know that it usually will not turn out perfect on the first firing. It may be very cool, but not exactly like I envisioned. I accept that fact and start experimenting. I like breaking things down into the basic steps and then testing each step one at a time. This gives me less chance of having two possible causes of a single event. So I isolate the potential new areas and start playing. For example, I want to make a piece using System 96 glass, fused then bent into a new 'mini mold" all being fired in an Evenheat 'Hot Box' kiln. New glass, new mold, new kiln.

The first thing I need to do it test fire a piece of clear glass from that product line. Once it is cooled, I can view the fired clear glass under polarized light to see if I have excessive annealing stress. If I anneal for to short a period of time or if I anneal at the wrong temperatures I will have so much stress in the glass that I will not be able to heat it up to bend it into the mold without it breaking. So I have cut two circles out of clear System 96 which will have very close to the same annealing properties as the colored System 96 I eventually plan on using.

Fig. 1

I took a white paint pen and drew some grid lines one inch apart on the glass. These will show me how and where the glass stretches as it flowing into the mold. (FIG 1)

I fired the two layers to 1550 degrees F over a one hour and 20 minute period. One hour into the firing, I turned the kiln to "HI" and within 10 minutes, I had a big bubble in the center of the glass. I had to turn off the kiln and lift up one edge of the glass to let the air out and flatten my piece. (Made a note - Do Not use the HI setting when the glass is that close to the elements)