Been off my game

I haven't done any crafting lately because we have been letting a friend stay in my craft room. I started a pot melt project tonight I hope I don't cook her out of her room. It does get kinda warm when I melt glass. 

I'm doing a pot melt. I've got some glass that is just being wasted because it didn't do what I wanted it to when I first slumped it. Now I'm melting it in a terracotta pot and on to some thin fire paper. It should turn out to be sort of a rectangle of melted glass. People do pot melts to mix beautiful colors and create lovely effects. I would like to do that, but I'm still just trying things out so I'm not going to waste good glass on the project.

I didn't take any pictures. I didn't think anything I did was picture worthy. First thing I did was cut my glass into smaller pieces. Next I loaded them up in my terracotta pot and put the pot on three kiln posts to lift it above my kiln shelf. I set the kiln at the levels that were recommended and hit start. 

About forty minutes into the project I realized that my set up wouldn't work for a pot melt and I went in to change it. I put on my heat resistant glove and laid the kiln posts on their sides and put the pot back on. I next realized that there was a chance that the glass would stick to the kiln post so I put some thin fire paper on top of them. Now I think the thin fire paper is too close to the pot, but I also learned that my kiln is at a level where my heat resistant gloves don't work so well. They work, I would hate to feel the heat from the pot without the glove, but it was warm enough that I'm going to leave well enough alone.

We'll see what happens, this guy is going to learn to fly or hit the ground. 

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.)