Glass Fusing 2

I am writing this just after getting home from week 3 of our glass fusing course. I was looking forward to seeing the results of last week's efforts.

Here is the 6" square plate I made last week, after I cut all the glass. There is a clear layer of glass underneath, resting on three small plastic cups to make it easy to lift off.

The three shards are laid on top of the brown glass. These are pieces that are very thin, like eggshell, only in glass. They come in tubs, you don't have to cut them. Apparently to make them, they blow a giant glass bubble, cool it, and shatter it, so you end up with these very thin and slightly curved pieces. The orange line is a piece of stringer; long thin glass rods that are easily broken into lengths.

Between last week and this week, the magic happens in here. This is the kiln that our work is fired in. As you can see it is big; I laid a pair of scissors at the bottom for scale. It takes all our pieces at once. They are fused first into a flat piece, before slumping the glass into the mould.

This is what greeted me when I arrived for this week's course. One fused and slumped glass dish! You can see the individual pieces flow into each other now. The three shards have got a lot more organic looking too, with softer edges.

Here's another angle, so you can see the curve better. It is flat in the middle; just the corners are curved.

This week we made round dishes. Look for it in next week's episode!