Two weeks ago I got a little wordy talking about the first class I took, “Set Your Kiln on Fire,” so here is part 2 describing the second class I had the privilege of taking!
Fortunately, I have a very supportive husband and while I was taking the first class, he was conspiring with a friend and employee at Bullseye Glass, Devon Willis, to convince me to take a second class, Basic Kilncast Glass taught by Jim Weiler. It was something very different for me and I really enjoyed the change.
First, I began using clay to create a sculpture making it look exactly like what I wanted my final glass piece to look like.
Second, I built the mold up around the clay (with a little help from Jim :-)) and let it harden.
After the mold material hardened, I turned it over and gently removed the clay to create a cavity to which I could add glass. Sorry, I forgot to take an intermediate picture, but for this project we added glass billets which are very large chunks of glass. The benefit of using the billets is less bubbles for a very nice final piece of glass.
And last, after adding the glass billets (oh and calculating exactly how much glass I would need for my exact piece of glass), I waited for many hours as a piece like this takes approximately 30 hours in the kiln. When it was cool, I carefully removed the mold material and disposed of it as it is not reusable, did some clean up around the details of the glass and even some coldworking to smooth the edges and voila, my final piece!
I actually like the glass cast from the reverse side as it shows the depth when you hold it up to the light. Totally cool and a truly great experience to try something like this.
Thanks, Bullseye, for yet another wonderful class!
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