It is better than it has been

So my bottle is all slumpy.

It has some air bubbles, there are air bubbles, I've found sites that give me ideas of how to reduce the chance of getting air bubbles, but I think that the glass marble might have been some of the problem.

 

The thing I have now is that I don't have the imagination to envision what to do with it next. The marble is raised some, but flattened on the bottom. It is interesting. But it's just a flattened bottle. Do I want to make it a spoon rest? Do I want to make it a wind chime? 

I guess it is going to sit on a shelf while I make up my mind. It might have a few problem areas, but I think it deserves better than that.

Project one done, now on to #2

Grrrr.

Well I knew that the project wasn't going to turn out, but it didn't turn out as badly as I thought it would.

Still not usable, but not without some learning value.
I definitely know that I let the glass soak too long, because I had the rounded curve I was looking for on two sides of the baby food container.

If I hadn't let it soak quite as long, maybe the rest of it would have stayed up.

I also learned not to mix projects where you want different results. Did I already say that? I wanted a full on flat fuse with the classic bottle, and I wanted a rolled, rounded look for the baby food jars. There was no way I was going to get both at the same time, warm glass just doesn't work that way.
Oh, and yes, I did already say something similar.
So I'm trying with four baby food jars now.

As you can see I didn't do anything to them except take off the labels. I didn't embellish them or anything.

 I'm using a contour fuse for my firing schedule. I'll post the schedule if the results turn out.
Oh and sorry for any formatting issues Blogger is being weird and I'm not in the mood to try and figure it out.

Well I didn't take a picture of it,, because I just left the pieces in the kiln and reset it, but the two didn't slump at all. The bronze and gold got completely ruined.
Oh well, I'm just practicing anyway. I tried another slumping schedule, maybe this one will work. I was going to post pictures and notes about my last slump, but like I said I didn't.
The major note about my last slump is that I only took it up to 1175 degrees and this new one has me taking it to 1475. Big difference.

I don't know if you can see anything in this video. I tried to show the inside of the kiln and how my projects looked at this temp. The kiln temp is at 1475 right now. So the inside of the kiln was bright. I might try again as it is cooling and post that, but if you can't see the classic bottle is fully slumped, but the edges slumped down and it still has the broken shape. I had hoped that the broken edges would slump inward and the broken-ness wouldn't be noticeable. But you know, wish in one hand crap in the other...
No really I'm learning stuff.
The baby food bottle has slumped too far, it is going to come out flat, and that isn't what I'm looking for. I lesson for this one, don't slump the items you want flat with the items you want a lip on.
Actually I didn't want the bottle completely flat either, but, that is how it turned out.
The thing is I don't know enough about glass work yet to know if I should lower the temp or shorten the soak time.
 I'm going to experiment tomorrow with a shorter soak time. I'm going to use baby food bottles and try to do a better job cutting it.
The fuse time I used this time was from Big Ceramic Store. They have a lot of useful info. I still have to go over everything they posted.

Segment	Rate	degrees F	Hold
1	500	500	12 min
2	500	750	12 min
3	600	1100	10 min
4	200	1300	20 min
5	250	1475	10 min
6	9999	1100	1 hr
7	500	970	30 min
8	120	750	20
Let kiln cool naturally.  It is a longer fuse schedule then I have been doing, so we'll see. I might cut the hold times in half. I don't know.

Project one (With a hind of insomnia)

So I couldn't sleep last night. Is this what manic feels like? So I decided to be useful and work on a glass project. I had cleaning the bottles, scoring the bottles, and slumping the bottles.

I won't know until the firing cycle is over if the slumping portion worked out, but as for the cleaning and scoring, I didn't do well for my first time.

 There are plenty of websites that go over ways you can score a bottle, the method I chose for my first time wasn't an efficient method so I won't go over it in the notes.

I added some embellishments an 18k gold surround to the baby bottle, the plan is that is going to be a candle holder, and a bronze star to the bigger bottle, I don't have a plan for what that is going to be; I'm just trying things out.

I'll post pics good or bad. Gotta start somewhere, right?

I'm not sure about my slumping schedule, there are lots of different ones on the net, I'll just keep trying until I find one that works. That is if it doesn't work the first time :-)

 I have five cycles for my firing schedule. The kiln automatically goes through the cycles. I don't have to watch it or anything, it is just set and go. (I practically stole this kiln when I bought it for $25.)