More Trouble…

…hopefully a good kind.

I decided to keep using the mini melt rings for doing pot melts for now until I can get the right furniture for melting directly into casting rings.  My last attempt didn’t work out so well.  In order to keep using terra cotta saucers I really need something like this.

I found this at Delphi Glass. The problem here is that it’s designed for their pot melt system so it’s only 7 inches wide and from what I can tell the hole itself is no more than 5 inches in diameter.  In order to take advantage of the 8 inch saucers I really need something that’s 10 inches wide with a 6 to 6.5 inch hole.  I’m fairly sure I wont be able to buy something that ready made so I’ll have to make one myself out of a kiln shelf.  In theory that shouldn’t be to hard if you have the right equipment to cut a hole.  There’s one catch; I don’t have the right equipment. 

So in the meantime I’ll stick with using the mini melt casting rings.  The main disadvantage to that is I’m introducing and extra step in the process.  I have to take the blank and do and extended full fuse at 1500 for about 45 minutes to flatten it out.  But this isn’t really what this post is about.

I was looking at my 8 inch ring and thinking “I can probably squeeze 2 of them in my kiln and maybe even a 6 inch melt as well”.  I had been doing my melts on a kiln washed shelf set directly on the bottom of the kiln.  I decided lose the shelf and line the bottom of My 16 X 16 inch kiln with a 17 X 17 inch piece of 3 millimeter fiber paper. 

Here’s two 8 inch melts in situ (I’ve been dying to use that somewhere…Crappy Diem!)

Here are the results:

For the next batch I did 3.  If it weren’t for the thermocouple I could squeeze in another 6 incher.

While being able to crank out a bunch of melts out a small kiln is pretty cool there’s a downside to this.  I have further processing to do on these blanks and I can really only do one at a time especially if I’m flattening them out.  Hmmm…maybe I just need a bigger kiln…Muah Ha Ha ha ha.

Yup.  This is trouble.

Some More Melts and a Boofoo

First the good stuff.

Here’s a couple of melts that still need to be flattened out.

Here’s a melt that I just flattened out.  I used the bottom of the melt rather than the top because I think the colors and patterns were more interesting.  I might use this for another art piece for the guild show.

And now for the boofoo (and it was a doozy).

Up until now I’ve been doing my melts into a Slumpys 8 inch mini melt ring using 8 inch terra cotta saucers.  I’ve been wanting to do a melt directly in a casting ring and just recently got the furniture to do so.  I made up a plate with two 3/4 inch holes about 2 inches apart in the center and then two more on either side near the edges of the saucer.  Essentially the pattern ran lengthwise in the center of the plate leaving plenty of space to rest the plates on the furniture.

Now the problem here was that since I couldn’t see the holes because they were covered by glass I failed to double check the hole orientation by lifting the saucer and looking underneath I ended up placing two of the holes directly on to of the furniture.

The results were ugly (and no I didn’t take pictures).   There was melted glass around the furniture and stuck to the bottom of the saucer.  I ended up throwing bother the posts and the saucer out.

Ugh.

Now as for the melt itself…it’s interesting. It’s kind of oblongish…and right now I have no clue what to do with it.

This is one of those “just stick this glass rack and think about it” pieces. Some Idea will gel sooner or later.   The reality given the limits of my method a lot of my melts will still need to be done (I think) using the mini melt.  Sometimes I put holes near the edge of the saucer and there won’t be enough saucer available to rest on the furniture.  Oh well…