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.
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.
yellow (or red) and blue is not a good combination because the sulphur will comnbine with the copper in the blue (or green) to produce black or at best brown.
Yes, They did have a reaction. But in this case I actually like it. I cut the slab into pieces and it made some very interesting and unique pendants.
I know that you wrote this piece several years ago but I am a fairly newbie fuser and came across it on your blog. It made me laugh as I have had exactly the same experience with the same set up and your pictures seemed so familiar…..it was heartbreaking!!I managed to salvage enough to make an interesting 15cm square bowl with unusual small fragments of metal in it from the mesh.
Welcome to the wonderful world of glass fusing. It a great journey!
HI Margot, is there an easy way to clean up screens that still have glass stuck to them after use?
I place the screen flat on my workbench and then hit it with a hammer. This gets most of it off. What is left shouldn’t be much of a problem for the next melt.
I am looking to make an 11″ round melt. I can only find a 12″ or 8″ screen to support the glass. (I have found the 11″ ring mold). My question is this, can I use the 12″ screen to melt into an 11″ ring? In other words, will the glass on the screen actually flow to a 12″ diameter before it drips through the mesh?
You would have to be very careful to keep the glass that you pile on the screen to an area directly over and inside the area of the 11″ ring. While the glass shouldn’t flow out over the screen (as it softens it should start to pull down) I would still keep my glass more to the middle of the screen and then leave it in the kiln long enough to have it flow and fill in the circle.