What do you do with a bunch of broken glass from a glass table top? Make a bowl of course!
This was a four step process!
First: A large piece of glass needs to be cleaned with rubbing alcohol or dish washing soap and then made into frit. Frit is small chunks of glass. In this case, the frit was one inch pieces and larger. We used an old glass table top from a recycle shop and broke it up into small pieces.
Second: The glass frit was arranged into a round circle. On a kiln shelf covered with a large piece of fiber paper the glass was laid out with a flower or starburst pattern in the middle to give it some artistic interest. It was carefully checked for holes between the chunks- if the holes are too big and the pieces aren’t touching in enough places, the glass will pull apart and leave bigger holes in the piece. Any large holes were filled with smaller pieces of frit- the size of medium frit. It is important to remember that all the glass used in this project comes from the same piece of glass. As this is float glass, it has an unknown COE, coefficient of expansion and it will work best if all the pieces are from the same source. The medium frit added so much interest to the piece, because all the other pieces of frit were so much bigger.
Third: Place the shelf with the glass carefully into the kiln and fire to a full fuse. This is thick float glass, the schedule is a bit different than the glass I normally fuse. Staying too long at the highest temp causes the glass to devitrify. This took about 16 hours.
Fourth: Remove the flat piece from the kiln shelf, clean off any fiber paper powder, and put into a slump mold. Slump the piece. This took about 16 hours. And there you have it! A beautiful functional bowl for your kitchen counter! Enjoy!
Have a beautiful, creative day!
Eileen
