Some Thing, Some Thing, Hot Shop
From Furnace to Flame: A Journey In Glass
So, I cranked up the hot shop for my 4th day at it. I tested out the thermometer to learn that it only goes up to 1000 degrees so not really useful for this. I also tried using magnetic trays to contain the frit. I tested out some hand-me down shears that I added to the tool drawer. Oh, and this torch meant for weeding yards.
We successfully made some turquoise glass with copper foil. We also attempted an eye cane and made a very nice twisted cane. The plan was to make a fused plate with the mosaic eye cane but that is a story for another day.
Our biggest mission was to make some linen smoothers. They came out nice but we struggled at first with the mechanics. However, the kiln failed on us to anneal the glass and all of them broke.
I turned the eye cane into mosaic chips and made some beads from the turquoise glass.
Definitely love the way the hand-pulled cane gives the beads a lot of character. So many things are going right, but I am still not happy with the reds and yellows.
After getting the kiln fixed, we started our 6th day of working in our outdoor hot shop.
The biggest problem of the day was we kept getting seeds in the gathers. We did introduce an improved ladder for cane pulling. We set out to make some green, red, and white cane and a redo on the smoothers. Everything else was extra.
The end result was three smoothing stones. This is the first time we made an object in the furnace on our own that survived the full production process.
