Green glass?? Now this needs it's own post here. The word you are looking for is cloisonne.. I understand very little about the practice. The trick I think is you have to create the area to embed the glass. It was done carving out channels for the glass frit. Frit is available in different sizes and when melted, run together. The channels keep the glass in place. Here is some pictures I took at a museum recently of Chinese cloisonne. This stuff makes us look like the hacks we are.
Yeah I've seen that stuff before. That's a different thing than I was thinking. I'm talking about enameling the leaves using glass powder. There's a place up the road from me that enamels pure silver and copper. They told me that the glass won't stick to alloys that have more than a few percent of another metal in them. So brass, stick won't work, and sterlings melting point is too low to work. I'm not sure if silicon bronze would work but I suspect it would since its 96% copper which is basically pure metal. They haven't ever tried Si-bronze so they don't know. I'd like to enamel that jewelry box I made for the gf as well. I've tried it out on horizontal surfaces and gotten it to work with pure copper but I need more experience before doing vertical enameling.
Sticks to silicon bronze fine, but not white bronze or anything with more than 5% zinc. Stuff can put your eye out when applied to brass as it cools, cracks, pops and comes flying at your face. The epoxies are much easier to deal with and can be just as hard as glass....
I tried some epoxy enamels. Didn't like the look compared with glass. But yeah I know what you mean about popping as it cools. That's why I need to repair my kiln. Interesting that it works on bronze. They told me a story of how one of the car companies approached them wanting to enamel some cast car logos for the hoods of some fancy cars but they knew of no metals that looked like brass that would work. Obviously they didn't and don't know about silicon bronze which would have been perfect for their customer.
The cloisonne in the above photos is copper. Does that company sell the stuff to do this or will only they do the work? Fritz wants a bronze fish coming out of a blue glass lake
They do the enameling on site and will sell the powder to you by the oz if you want. They were friendly enough. A mom and pop place from long ago. The only enameling place left in CT or probably the surrounding states. They also do repairs on older enameled stuff and have many patterns for making new enameled things. Got some really nice looking pieces.
Bovano is the enameling place near me. I tried some of the resin based ones, they seemed to be pretty soft for many days after. They slowly hardened but didn't seem as hard as glass. Is there an additional ingredient I didn't add to mine??
BOVANO 830 S Main St, Cheshire, CT 06410 (203) 272-3208 https://maps.app.goo.gl/rH9UzqzYAXeFZ3mh8 info@bovano.com his name is Jim. He remembers me bc of the silicone bronze jewelry box I brought to him. He has the good quality powders not the shit on ebay from China. The good French made glass powder. Very helpful as well with procedures and trouble shooting.
There is 2 different harddeners. 1 normal, one "glass hard" with either one I found your better off adding a bit of heat to get them to cure. 80 - 90 F.
I didnt know Rio sold glass. Not exactly the first place I think of when considering glass. There is million places to get frit.
He makes it look easy.... There's a reason I went to the epoxy instead, actually about 5 reasons... YOU'LL FIND OUT!
Depends on exactly what you are trying to do. Two of the biggest issues I had were one warping and two oxides. As the glass cools it shrinks and something has to give, either the glass cracking or the base metal being "pulled up" I was doing this over copper. If the copper got too hot it would oxidize and leave specs in the clear glass. (Sometimes not all ways) Interesting stuff to play with and a great way to kill time. Might be best using it over silver?? If I had a small glass fusing kiln I'd probably still play with it for some small jewelry and such.
I was told to coat the back of the metal with glass to prevent it popping and warping. That way it cools equally and won't do that. They used a mix of random glasses that was gray in color for the backs of things. Cast the flowers. Will clean them up and maybe weld them tomorrow.
Blasted, ground and ready to tig weld tomorrow. I need to buy more rod and gas. Probably going to cost me a hundred that I don't have. Unless I can get by with about 500 psi of argon gas left on my 4 ft high cylinder. What do you think? Will I be able to weld the flower and the octopus?
