Exactly Don. Ya see, when you cast glass, anything it touches while in it's molten state will not solidify shiny. Only areas exposed to open air will be shiny. I need these to be clear. They are too detailed to shine by hand with mechanical means. So acid dipping is the only option to bring back the gloss and make them clear again. Maybe be I should be going for the old and tired look huh? I've got this glass casting thing down now, it's really easy to do, but god is it BORING and slow. The color is really lackluster with gaffer lead glass. That was the darkest green and brightest yellow they sell. Once you put a light behind them, the colors wash out.
So all the slump glass stuff has to be polished in some manner? I've got cheap glass plates and bowls that appear to have been slump formed and are shiny. For the price I paid, couple of bucks each, I find it hard to believe that they polished them too. Just thought, they are clear, maybe that's the difference. Don
When glass slumps it turns shiny. But flip one of them over, you cannot have all sides of a handmade piece shiny without coldworking. (polishing) When up at slumping temps, any part in contact with the floor, shelf, you name it, is going to leave it's mark. Look at the back of this. It was perfectly shiny, but I flipped it over to fire polish the front. See what happens? This is the back of the blue piece from http://forums.thehomefoundry.org/index.php?threads/chunk-jewel-lamp.622/page-6
Whomp Whomp Waaahhhh... $155 bucks later for 3 pieces and here is the results. The yellow picked up some shine, but not 50bucks worth. The green did nothing. Interesting, both of these pieces contain a minimum of 42% lead and this should have worked. hmmm The 3rd red piece isn't worth showing. Upon closer inspection on the yellow, I almost think it's worse. Makes me think I should have sandblasted half of one before sending them out for test.
I wonder how a vibratory tumbler would go at polishing these with some media fine enough to keep the features.
I would love to get into some glass stuff. I have seen some really cool bottles melted into ladle holders and such. I think the wife would kill me if I expanded my hobbies though. .
I am starting to think you might have something there Mark. I would guess it would be best to cast the features exaggerated and sand blast as fine as I can to get a head start on tumbling. Anyone ever hear of sugar polishing? Pat you don't need a new hobby, stick to iron. Glass is proving to be a pain in the ass and very boring. On a lighter note, my wife has taken to my collection of glass rods and is making earrings by the dozens. So far she has made more cash than I have with this bronze thing. hmmm 2 pairs for 10bucks and ladies are hunting her down for them. It's like catnip for cats.
I've never heard of sugar polishing before. I think with vibratory tumblers you have some rubber chunks to push the polishing abrasive into the corners of the glass, so the rubber wipes the glass and to some extent keeps the chunks from hitting each other too much. There's also a precision method of pumping a stream of polishing slurry at the glass surface used for aspheric lenses which could be jury rigged.
My wife can up-stage me any time she likes! All this pain you are going through with the glass is saving the lots of people the learning curve, think of it as a public service
Hey Peedee, I met someone recently up in NY and he sent me a photo you'll get a kick out of. He is the lad on the bike. That was his Dad's ride. Notice the gas lanterns.
That's milliefiori. They call it murrini cane. Cut to length for size and slumped. She did a ton of others, some transparent and others in opalescent glass.
The gas lamps look great (bit before my time BTW, I'n not that bl**dy old!) Can't take my eyes of that Jag! Mk2?
Inside/Outside, upside down. After a fair amount of research, I have figured out two methods of glass work was performed for the period. One of them was pressed glass. This makes sense as the technology was new at the time, cheap to do and people ate it up. So for this lamp, I am changing course a bit and will attempt to press glass. If this works, more complex shapes can be attempted in the future. For now, I elected a simple shape and will try to make about a dozen of these in a few colors. To do this, I need the mold. Molds at the time were said to have been made of bronze, brass or cast iron. I didn't see the need to open up some new silicone for this one, so I ran plaster with decent results. I'll boil this out when it's ready and pour with bronze. I've never "gathered" glass or tried this pressing stuff before so this could get hairy. Watch the video below, looks pretty idiot proof to me. So here we go. Simple shape
The people who can do stuff well in videos (see ironsides) make it look easy, but "easy" can be very deceiving. It only took me six short years to get to the point where ironsides is as far as getting iron to a hot pour temperature consistently. So somebody with your brainpower I think would pick up the glass molding quickly. I really like the glass moulding technique in general. But instead of glass, I think I would like to strike either decorative coins, or perhaps belt buckles. I guess I should just cast coins or belt buckles, but striking them on dies seems like a cool process for some reason. Good luck. .
Thanks Pat. no harm in trying something ya haven't done before. err.. well, I can think of a couple things I'm NOT TRYING. lol Forget getting dies made here these days. Even the chinese are pretty expensive at that level of work. Last dies we had made was for some plastic vents. Cost 10k! When your finger heals, cad you up some stuff and get with me. I can probably get my nephew to resin print out a few for ya. You'll need to run solid investment in a flask, but I've got the proper burnout schedule. That was half the battle with that b9c!
Looks like you made the mold of a mold! Now pop out some copies and cast it into metal. So you can cast glass. Mental back flips haha. I'm excited to see how it works.
One is plenty. It's not casting. I tried just slumping glass into a metal frame and it locked itself into the bronze due to the different coe's. Cracked the glass. This is get the glass molten, count 5 bananas and remove. Hit with a quick flame if necessary and anneal. The idea is to keep the shiny appearance of the glass. You're right, it was mental gymnastics of the first degree.
