Fusing Demo! (Day 3) IMAGE HEAVY!

Looking back on my blogs, I've noticed a decided lack of grammatical accuracy and a touch of spastic sentence structure. All I can say is that I am truly sorry and will try my best to get my crap in gear. I apparently am much more well spoken and may want to stick to teaching in person rather than online.


So this picture illustrates how NOT to set up your kiln space. This is just where the poor dear ends up when I am not using it. A kiln needs room! It needs to have all flammable material as far from it as possible, and it should be on a reasonably fireproof surface. I tend to fire my kiln on top of a few things, a stove, a dryer, a concrete floor (no oil spills in the garage), or on some other fire resistant surface.


For those with some major curiosity I have this picture to show what kind of kiln I fire. Nothing fancy, just a little hot box to get it going.






Next we have the insertion of the kiln shelf. I try to keep it equidistant from all sides so that the kiln walls do not touch the shelf. This is not always an easy task and sometimes a chopstick or some other long thin instrument is used.




All pieces of glass must be dry before being laid out on the kiln shelf. I cannot express how important this is. If the glass is not dry, it can lead to breaking or popping in the firing process. The glass that breaks tends to do so in a rather violent fashion and you can coat the inside of your kiln if it is fired to full fusing temperature with a little peice of glass shrapnel. Please always dry your pieces very thoroughly!


Here is a picture of all the pieces laid out in the kiln. They all need a little "breathing" room around them so that none of them get too frisky. If you leave too little space and the glass is too thick, you could end up with a big fused blob where two should have been. It is very important to properly space.



Then the lid! WOO! Almost there!













Turn the switch to high... and wait.