Since I am making a glass vase today, I thought I would share with you the process I went through to make it (I hope it turns out ok, so you will see something nice :) ).
I am using a drop ring mold that is 9" in diameter on the outside and the hole is 5" in diameter. I cut two circles of clear glass (96 Spectrum) about 7" in diameter. I fused these two layers together in my kiln a couple of weeks ago. I want to have two layers of glass for this vase, because I am making it 4" tall and I don't want the vase to be too fragile.
I chose three colors of glass to add to the top of the clear layers. I gathered up my frit, stingers and scrap glass in these three colors and arranged them with no particular pattern in mind (see the photo below).
This photo shows the clear glass with three colors of frit, stringers and scrap glass on top. I put the glass on the drop ring mold and made sure it was centered.
I put the drop ring mold on posts that are 4" high.
I tack fused the colored glass to the clear glass in one firing. To do this, I soaked the glass at 1200 degrees for 60 minutes. After that, I raised the temperature to 1330 degrees and watched the glass very closely, so it would melt down to the shelf and make a nice solid base. I got the idea to tack fuse and slump the drop ring in one fusing from the website: www.warmglass.com in the Warm Tips section.
I am using a manual ceramic kiln, so I need to spend a lot of time watching the temperature and turning the dials on the kiln up or down when needed. During parts of the firing, the glass piece needs to soak at a certain temperature, so I need to be watching the temperature, so it stays constant.
Right now, the firing of the drop ring vase is done. Now I am annealing the glass, which means that I am slowly dropping the temperature. At certain temperatures, the glass needs to soak. Annealing the glass piece makes the glass much stronger and not likely to crack from stress.
I will end Part 1 at this point. Part 2 will show you the finished vase. We need to wait till tomorrow morning to open the kiln and take the vase out and look at it.
Christine -- Glass Artist
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