Fused Glass Screen Melt
Unfortunately, my first fused glass screen melt was not a great success. I purchased a screen melt kit made by Master Artisan. I placed a lot of clear glass on the screen, and then layered a variety of colored glass. I used cathedral glass in green and yellow, and added some blue opalescent glass with just a touch of white. Then I set my kiln to the schedule that came with the kit.
Well I was quite shocked the next day when I opened up the kiln. The slab of glass was fractured, and small shards of glass seem to have exploded all over the kiln shelf. My best guess is that the cool down was too quick. When I tried to take the glass out of the stainless steel form it stuck mightily, even though I had used a boron nitrate spray on it as a mold release. In the end I had to take a hammer to it. The back of the glass had a lot of kiln wash stuck to it.
My kiln shelf was damaged from this experiment. There are little pits on the shelf, and in several places where the stainless steel form touched the kiln shelf the shelf chipped. If you are going try this, I would use an old shelf, or at least the bad side of your shelf. I will have to replace mine.
The glass itself was very interesting. I loved the way the patterns and colors turned out. It was a fairly thick slab, about 1/4” thick. I will try to salvage what I can – maybe cut it up and make some pendants.
I will definitely try this again, but first I will look for another schedule, and I may use a clay saucer to catch the glass in. I will also change the ratio of cathedral glass to opalescent glass. In this first attempt I used 1/3 clear, 1/3 cathedral, and 1/3 opalescent. Next time I’ll go with ½ clear, ¼ cathedral, and ¼ opalescent.
Here are some pictures of the process.
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Great pictures, I would have been so disappointed, there’s a lot of pretty stuff in the glass too.
Yeah, I was a little disappointed, but more worried that I might have damaged the kiln with exploding pieces of glass in it. The kiln is fine and hey I know what not to do the next time.
WOW! Thanks for sharing this experiment. Clearly there is great potential with this approach, once it is controlled.