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Just out of curiosity, I was wondering how hard it would be to make striped round cabochons. Nothing fancy, just small round cabs in striped colours.
My thought was to simply layer up a few small strips of glass and full fuse to round cabochons. Well, that’s exactly what I did and this is how it turned out.
Using my usual offcuts of Bullseye COE 90 fusible glass I hunted out a few pieces I thought would suit. My idea being to layer up small 10mm x 5mm pieces on edge.
Well, cutting pieces that small is a challenge in itself. As you can see from this photograph they are far from uniform. If I intend to make more of these I will be looking for a better way of cutting these.
I carefully set a few of these in different colour combinations, on edge. Believe me, that takes a steady hand and you can’t rush this. No matter how hard you try you will end up touching the surface of the small pieces.
These were also fired on Bullseye Thinfire paper. The paper didn’t sit completely flat on the shelf and that also tended to make it a bit harder in balancing the pieces on edge. Note for the future, flatten the paper completely.
Anyway, after setting them up, and carrying the shelf to the kiln, very carefully, I fired them to a full fuse. The firing schedule is below.
You can see the result here. I doubt very much that it would be possible to always get a consistent result in the strips due to the smallness of the pieces and inevitable unevenness of the cutting, but the result is still not too bad. Given you can buy little cabs like this it probably isn’t economical to actually make them, but it can be done.
All in all, I was very happy with the result.
Firing Schedule
Full Fuse – Bullseye COE 90 Small Round Cabochons
Please be aware that all kilns fire differently and this schedule may not produce the same results in your kiln.
| Segment | Rate (C/hr) | Target (C) | Hold (mns) |
| 1. Strain Release | 222 | 537 | 30 |
| 2. Process | FULL | 780 | 15 |
| Crash Cool | Open Door | 550 | 0 |
| 3. Anneal | Full | 516 | 30 |
| 4. Cool | 83 | 371 | 1 |