A New Project

Our club does glass fusion, where you put two or more layers of glass together, pop them into a kiln, and take out a solid piece. It might be a dark background with a few bright shapes on it, say something geometric or abstract, or a flower, or wherever your imagination takes you. You can add frit, aka tiny pieces of glass, to fill in or accentuate your design, go for glass with swirls or patterns in it, even dichromatic glass for really interesting effects. Your final piece ma be lumpy or flat, can even have a clear layer  either top or bottom to keep everything together.

The prime rule, the thing you have to know before you start EVERY project, is whether your glass in 90 or 96. (No, don't ask me what those numbers mean. 90 what? 96 what?) What you have to remember is 90 glass only goes with 90 glass. 96 only goes with 96. If you mix, once they start to melt and then cool, they do so at different rates and your piece shatters. You wind up with shards of crap. Maybe a new hole in your skin. Even several.

Every once in a while, people donate their unused old glass to the club. Yes, we happily accept it. It saves us buying glass sheets and selling them to our members working in glass, though of course we do that too. Donated pieces are often used in workshops where different techniques are taught. The workshop still costs $3 per member taking it. That money goes for supplies, not a fee to the instructor because we're volunteers, and part of our club duties is putting in a certain numbers of hours per month. Teaching counts. But if we're not making a financial outlay for supplies, those funds garnered can go for other things for the club. Our profit margin increases in ways that help us.

With all that donated glass there is often a hitch. I bet you already know what it is. Glass comes in without the numbers marked on the pieces. Is it 90 or 96? Are they even all the same? Without that info, we can't combine them in a kiln. But we still find a way to use it. So long as it's one or the other,  not window glass or the kind of glass for a stained glass project but the kind which can go into a kiln, we can still use it. We just have to use each piece without letting it touch any other piece while in the kiln.

Our top instructors in glass put their heads together and came up with a project where we don't need to know which grade of glass we're working with. We make wind chimes!  We can cut all colors and designs of it in almost any size or shape, a small piece, a long rectangle, a triangle, a trapezoid, or however the glass breaks when you were trying for something else. Because that happens, particularly in workshops where we bring our untested skills and combine them with overused tools. (Once we decide we're serious, most of us go out and get new tools of our own.)

The trick with making glass wind chimes is knowing that a single piece of the right kind of glass, when in the kiln, tries to shrink back in from its sharp cut edges and grow a thicker, nicely round edge. In the process, with the right kiln setting, it gets harder as well. It may still shatter if you cool it too quickly, but you have to work at it.

The following day, once the glass has cooled back to room temperature and has the residue from the kiln paper removed (nasty in the lungs!), it can be drilled with special diamond bits in a dremel. Here's another trick to learn, doing it over a piece of wood in an ice water bath which covers a flat piece of wood, glass, and the tip of the drill bit, but not the dremel. You start at an angle, finger in a certain position holding it just right, and once the bit settles in and holds steady, you tilt the dremel to straight vertical and be patient until you're all the way through. It really has to be shown, then practiced. Once you get it, you can just whip through pieces of glass so long as the ice water doesn't make your fingers ache.

There are all kinds of varieties. Long thin pieces top-drilled only that hang close together about the same length and sway in the breeze are one example. A wire through the top of each vertical row of whatever you're hanging, and wrapped around your top bar which is something in a straight horizontal position, which itself hangs from whatever. Other designs combine various pieces drilled top and bottom, each linked by wire to a different piece individually, allowing motion in multiple ways of connecting. Other things can be combined with glass pieces in the vertical rows for variety, including terminal bells. Imagination is key, with just a little planning ahead of time. The bottom piece needs just one hole in the top so it swings clear. Those same drill bits also work on slices of stones, which I have a plethora of, flat and polished to some extent, and connect just as well by the same heavy copper wires. Even beads can be worked in. The sky's the limit - or at least the underside of your eaves, or a branch on a tree.

Fair warning to some of you who are heartily sick of getting jewelry for presents all the time. You might get something a bit noisier this year.