Full Fuse for Dots

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My apologies, again, I forgot to take an ‘after’ photo of the firing, but you should get the idea from my comments.

This firing was just to create a stack of clear and black dots, as well as rescue a few that didn’t work in a previous firing.

My plan for the dots is to use them in other items as decoration. Clear dots on a colour, when fully fused, give the appearance of a hole in the item. Many together give a sort of honeycomb appearance. The black dots will make great decoration as well, resulting in a nice defined point of reference for the eye. Mind you, being really new at this I can imagine a lot more uses and I am keen to experiment with these.

Anyway, on with the firing.

Before Firing

Fused Glass Dots
Fused Glass Dots – Before Firing

You can see from the photo that two thirds of the shelf is covered with just clear squares, single layer 3mm Bullseye 90 COE glass. I had tried a couple of these before and they did fuse into well defined round dots.

The other third of the shelf includes the same in black glass and a few odd shapes as well, out of curiosity, and a number of dots that did not fully fuse in a previous firing. I expected these to complete firing and fully round out.

After Firing

Well, most of the clear dots worked fine, with only a few not forming perfect dots. These were the larger ones. I think a little grinding and shaping would have helped, and possibly making them two layers.

Same with most of the black dots. Just a couple didn’t round completely.

The ones I tried to rescue sort of worked. Again, they fused better, but not into complete dots. This did surprise me a little but it could be because of glass volume. They were two 2mm layers of glass, not 3mm, so maybe surface tension could not pull them back into a nice round dot. Or it could be the temperature wasn’t hot enough or held long enough.

Something I have heard is to always fire for the largest piece in your kiln, so maybe that is something I didn’t do.

I had a couple of coloured dots in there as well and they did work perfectly.

There does seem to be a little variance in result due to the colour of the glass so that is something I need to keep in mind and make note of.

Firing Schedule

Because all the pieces in this firing were very small, I ramped up to target processing temperature at full speed. I had no concern about cracking the pieces and this seems to work fine.

I also decided to crash cool after processing was complete by opening the kiln door until down to 560 C and then let the segment finish and cool naturally.

SegmentRate (C/hr)Target (C)Hold (mns)
1. Ramp/ProcessFULL78515
Crash CoolOpen Door5600
2. AnnealFULL51660
3. Cool1803715

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