[TheForge] something I hope better than what was the theft of metal public
jerry Frost
akfrosty at mtaonline.net
Tue Apr 21 15:47:48 EDT 2015
Yes Bruce I'm melting it not slumping. While it doesn't flow quite like water it's amazingly fluid. Copper won't work as a dam unless I want to fuse it to the copper but that has a whole different set of issues, mainly COE. Steel and most alloys of glass have very close COEs. And yes, I've been giving it hours of temper time.
Polished stainless steel is the norm for shaping and handling molten glass and my first clamp is a flattened spoon with the handle bent around for a clamp. Unfortunately being so much thinner and larger surface area than the crosses it heats faster and hotter so the glass sweats out between the two like solder. I had limited success with soap stone welder's "chalk" but being a form of asbestos it's a great insulator making for an uneven melt. The glass didn't actually bond to the soap stone though so it's still a possible backer. One of my most successful attempts was carving a piece of soap stone to fit in the negative space. Unfortunately the glass only fused rather than melting.
I should mention what kinds of glass I'm using eh? Having poor results trying to melt marbles for a number of reasons I decided to try lamp glass. I found close, it seems there are so few lamp workers up here they all order from outside and no art glass studios carry rod. I bought red noodles, long flat strips. They're used for art glass like Chilhuly studios, not really lamp work glass but closer than marbles for sure. It's colors withstand heat much better than marble's colors.
The noodle melted nicely but made for an uneven fill. The negative space in a "Fredrich's" or "spread" is star shaped with points that diminish to very small spaces. My next move was to buy red frit. Frit conforms to the negative space nicely but holy macarel it really reduces in volume when the pile degasses. I was warned by the fellow at the art glass studio it would really reduce in volume so I piled it nearly to its angle of repose. The finished piece is about 1/3 full.
The backing I've had the best luck with so far is the kiln paper, ceramic paper similar to Kaowool. I got a good seal by putting a LITTLE bit of Kaowool under the negative space so the paper would conform to the cross more closely. Being spread crosses the bends and twists used to open them leaves surface texture and flattening them reduces their charm.
There are kiln washes and investment casing media molten glass won't stick to. The downside to both besides cost is neither would survive my forge if I actually wanted to do some forging and I'm not going to buy a glass kiln.
Thanks for the questions and suggestions Bruce.
I'm so new to messing with molten glass I have to develop a vocabulary to even ask a good question. This ALMOST makes me wish I lived close enough to Anchorage to take a few art glass classes. Talking to Drew at the glass studio was very enjoyable. Glass work and metal work appear to share a lot of vocabulary and processes if by different usage and terminology.
Jer
-----Original Message-----
From: TheForge [mailto:theforge-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Bruce .
Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2015 4:48 AM
To: Blacksmithing List Sponsored by ABANA
Subject: Re: [TheForge] something I hope better than what was the theft of metal public
Jerry,
Obviously you're trying to MELT the glass into that cavity. Problem is that glass flows like water when up to its melting point.
If you can support the glass so it doesn't flow away (which seems what you're trying to do), you may be partway there. Make a copper dam. Copper flashing might work. Thicker copper could be crimped up against the steel. The main problem there it that copper will stick to the glass.
Maybe you can melt the glass into the copper-dammed hole, then remove the copper after by heating it with a torch to melt the glass immediately contacting the copper.
Backing off, though, you might consider slumping instead. In slumping, you don't melt the glass -- you "sag" it into the opening. So imagine you get a chunk of plate glass and knap it roughly to shape and size, slightly oversized perhaps. Support the underside of the hole with something, put the glass on top, and heat till the glass slumps into the hole. With luck, the whole piece would go into the hole, but there's no guarantee of that.
Slumping can be done from two sides -- combining slumping with fusing -- if you support the lower piece. The result would be a piece of glass that surrounds the hole, like an "H" with the crossbar through the hole.
Whether you slump or melt, one approach would be to use a LOT extra glass, get some of it to fuse within the hole, then GRIND off the excess.
Flame-polish the ground surface.
If you're any good at knapping glass, you could simply shape the glass to fit the hole and epoxy it in place. Not as elegant, but effective.
It is entirely possible you're using too high a temperature. You should be able to melt glass at a red heat. Copper enameling is often done in an electric kiln -- just visualize the heat of a NiCr element.
Another possibility is to add a "thickener" to your glass. Mix sharp
(silica) sand evenly into your glass frit. The glass will melt long before the sand, and the whole should behave as a thick liquid. The result will not be clear, but translucent.
All above ideas are presented free of charge and are guaranteed to be highly speculative and completely untested.
I presume you're "annealing" the object (in the glass sense of the word) to prevent the glass from shattering when it cools?
Bruce
NJ
On Tue, Apr 21, 2015 at 2:27 AM, Peter Fels & Phoebe Palmer < artgawk at thegrid.net> wrote:
> I haven’t seen it in years, but there used to a carbon paste that
> could be used to make a sort of mold one could fill with welding rod
> or you could pack it in a threaded hole and save the threads when you welded nearby.
> Handy stuff but when i went back to Forney, they didn’t stock it any more.
> How bout backing the kiln paper with clay?
>
> On Apr 20, 2015, at 10:51 PM, jerry Frost <akfrosty at mtaonline.net> wrote:
>
> Won't work. aluminum has a melting temp of around 1,100f and glass
> needs in excess of 1,500 to slump and better than 1,600 to flow. Glass
> sticks to darned neat anything, I was getting limited success with
> soap stone but being a form of asbestos it insulated the glass enough
> it'd barely vitrify instead of liquify.
>
> The guy at the art glass studio sold me a roll of kiln paper which is
> ceramic fiber paper, same stuff as Kaowool. Kiln paper seems to be
> working okay so far. I can get a good enough seal the glass doesn't just flow out.
>
> I just brought kiln paper backer experiment #2 in and it's a fail. It
> flowed and it looks like the paper kept it in the cross but there's
> barely a skim at the "bottom" and I had it piled pretty high. I now
> know one more way it won't work. YAY! I should keep count though I
> strongly doubt I'll rival Edison's count.
>
> Jer
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: TheForge [mailto:theforge-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of
> Saint Phlip
> Sent: Monday, April 20, 2015 5:56 PM
> To: Blacksmithing List Sponsored by ABANA
> Subject: Re: [TheForge] something I hope better than what was the
> theft of metal public
>
> Tin foil dams?
>
> On Mon, Apr 20, 2015 at 9:54 PM, jerry Frost <akfrosty at mtaonline.net>
> wrote:
>
> > "The Art of Blacksmithing" has a piece about it too. What I'm doing
> > isn't really slumping, I'm attempting to melt the glass to a state
> > fluid enough to fill nooks and crannies and be somewhat thick, in
> > the 1/8" range. I have my latest tempering in the forge now but it's
> > really hard to keep the stuff in the negative space when fluid
> > enough to flow. The stuff tends to want to sweat out like solder and
> > spread out between the cross and the clamp.
> >
> > Jer
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: TheForge [mailto:theforge-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf
> > Of dantull dantull
> > Sent: Monday, April 20, 2015 3:42 PM
> > To: Blacksmithing List Sponsored by ABANA
> > Subject: Re: [TheForge] something I hope better than what was the
> > theft of metal public
> >
> > Jer,
> > Melting(slumping) glass into steel cavities was done by Ivan
> > Bailey(ABANA
> > founder) many years ago. It certainly does work . Even for me.
> >
> > It's not firewood, it's a vaasse.
> > Dan Tull
> > Georgia
> >
> > On Mon, Apr 20, 2015 at 4:47 PM, jerry Frost
> > <akfrosty at mtaonline.net>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> A tarp with weighted edges and flesh eating beetles. A few days
> >> and bones are all that's left.
> >>
> >> Good grief I can't believe I actually contributed to this thread.
> >> Is anyone actually doing something constructive we can talk about?
> >>
> >> I don't want to be a lurker who just gripes and never contributes
> >> so I'll put this up. I'd post a pic or two of what I've been
> >> experimenting with but Shutterfly requires me to subscribe and I
> >> get too much spam already. Text it is then. I'll shoot you pics on
> >> the side if you like.
> >>
> >> Recently I've been making Fredrich's crosses, they're good
> >> beginner's projects and any kind of twisting wows the new folk so
> >> they're good demo products. Recently our Pastor retired so I
> >> thought I'd make him ad the new Pastor a nice key forb, zipper pull, etc.
> >> but wanted a little something extra and thought filling the
> >> negative space with red glass was a natural if kind of heavy handed symbolism.
> >>
> >> That's what I've been doing. One of the guys in the club is a champ
> >> at slumping marbles but what I'm trying is more like Plique a jure
> >> only much thicker and in a steel frame. This is proving a little
> >> problematical but is progressing. Seriously, what fun is
> >> experimentation
> > if it's easy?
> >>
> >> I spent a very profitable 45 minutes or so sponging everything I
> >> could from the owner and instructor at an art glass studio in
> >> Anchorage. I learned a bunch of good stuff. funny, his first
> >> comment after I described what I'm trying was. "It won't work."
> >> Then I showed him the latest successful piece and he said, "maybe it will."
> >> It wasn't what I'm ultimately shooting for but it's not bad, even
> >> marketable if I can't get better.
> >>
> >> Oh, the last feature of the crucifixes for the Pastors. They aren't
> >> going to be key fobs or zipper pulls I'm making the bottom of the
> >> post a bottle opener. I had to change from 3/8" sq. stock to 1/2" sq.
> >> but it's a small sacrifice. I mean really what Pastor shouldn't
> >> have a nice custom made, hand forged church key?
> >>
> >> Jer
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: TheForge [mailto:theforge-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf
> >> Of Andrew Vida
> >> Sent: Monday, April 20, 2015 11:55 AM
> >> To: Blacksmithing List Sponsored by ABANA
> >> Subject: Re: [TheForge] the theft of metal public
> >>
> >>
> >> On 4/19/15, 7:26 AM, Larry Brown wrote:
> >>> Actually I believe in that case it is fixed. Corpses tend not to
> >>> do many more stupid things ;-)
> >> They do, however, make a nasty mess for the rest of us to clean. :(
> >> ______________________________________________________________
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>
> --
> Saint Phlip
>
> Only President Obama could double the stock market, cut the deficit by
> 2/3, bring gas down under $3, get bin Laden, end 2 wars, bring
> unemployment down under 6%, while fighting a government that is
> trying to destroy him, and still be told he's failing as President.
>
>
> Heat it up
> Hit it hard
> Repent as necessary.
>
> Priorities:
>
> It's the smith who makes the tools, not the tools which make the smith.
>
> .I never wanted to see anybody die, but there are a few obituary
> notices I have read with pleasure. -Clarence Darrow
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