I've been running out of sharp drill bits - the high quality kind, that bite right in and, when new, can drill the glass through in 3 minutes. Not 20 or, worst case, even more, including never. Going online my sources of high quality brand bits have dried up. There are still lots of pieces to drill, and I just bought more glass.
Go figure, right?
I hadn't started cutting and baking them yet on Friday. I had time to try something different. I knew just whom to ask. While we have lots of people in the club who make fused glass jewelry, I'm the only one currently making wind chimes (and preparing to start teaching). But we have a couple - literally, a married couple - who do lots of different things with glass. I had gotten a suggestion from Mary on a different way to get baked glass to connect to other pieces, back a couple months ago. I hadn't paid more attention than to note the possibility, as my glass on hand had all been baked already. They still all had to be drilled, dang it! This new option gets done between cutting and baking. With my newest glass delivery, it was time to seek her out and find out the details.
She had two ideas, one of which was more work than the other. It involved cutting a narrow piece of a special kind of foam that goes across the glass and extends on past the ends, then laying a short piece of glass lengthwise over it so that when melted/fused the top small piece of glass touches the large piece on both sides of the foam. The work comes after baking, inserting a stiff wire or something to poke all the remaining foam away, leaving a channel for a string or wire or whatever to go through. That wire or whatever would then hook up in whichever way one wants to the next whatever. I say "whatever" because possibilities are limited to imagination, materials, skills and desired end product.
Mary warned me that poking out the foam was very time consuming. I was looking to avoid both the cost of new impossible-to-find diamond bits and the time required to drill them. A typical morning in the club gets between 6 and 10 pieces drilled, depending on one or two holes per piece. How about something faster?
There are small U-shaped wires specially designed to tolerate kiln temperatures. You put two drops of a clear glue on the end of your glass where you want to hook it to something, set the wire on it so the loop hangs out past the glass, then cut a tiny piece of either the same or clear glass with the same COE which covers all of the wire which is on the glass and a little bit past. Glass fusion in the kiln leaves a lump but securely holds the wire in place once cool. Mary let me use her clear glue for my first set-up tray, and also let me buy her package of the wires since the club didn't have them. Her husband is now in charge of ordering supplies so they will be available for anybody, and once she gets a price for them I'll pay her for hers and she can get more. Right now she's not using them, though she brought a sample project she'd previously made using them, just to show me the result.
I've reserved the kiln for the next 4 days. We have other kilns, but this is the one where I don't need to climb a ladder to set the program (whose silly idea was that in a club with all seniors?), or have to press 15 buttons - and that's if you stop at exactly the correct program number. It's very easy to get frustrated and lose count, tapping three extra buttons before having to stop, delete the bogus instructions you've programmed in, and start over. After a couple deep breaths, of course. I need easy in, easy out. Put in a ceramic slab 8"x8" covered with kiln paper supporting whatever glass pieces you can fit in without touching each other (or the wire sticking out past) during the baking, each day until you're finished. My first load is out, washed, ready to put into some more wind chimes.
Two more chimes have been requested for presents. One will be on display in January at a community wide event where new residents get informed of everything wonderful that Sun City has to offer. Part of that is a stage presentation by the Rec Centers organization. The other is where tables are set up, on either side of the auditorium, one from each club which wants to be there, with displays of what they produce or do, along with literature to take home. A couple of people sit there to talk about the club. Some tables even offer a dish of candy! (Maybe they think they can bribe new members?)
After all that I can finally make the wind chimes I want for my own house!
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