artistic problem

[Archie Zietman]

If You have a gas forge, a reducing atmosphere is better for heating the glass, at least in the studio where I blow glass that's what we do. Just a thought.

[Pault17]

Thanks All!
The next time I fire things up I will give it a try as well.

thanks for guinea pigging ralphy. the fear factor has been reduced

[julian]

I've been thinking about combining glass and steel for quite some time now, but the one main problem you will always face: glass cracks.

Glass is basically like super high carbon steel; if you cool it off too quick it will crack. If you let any glass besides pyrex cool in air, it will crack due to stress. Pyrex is really expensive stuff, especially in colors. If you did art with both glass and metal it would cost a pretty penny, but sure would look nice. Always something to experiment with if you have the equipment!

[gerald]

I wonder if a feller could melt the glass into the proper spot and then put the piece into a pre-heated heat treating oven (I use a toaster oven from the flea market -$3). The heat would then be lowered gradually to hopefully prevent cracking. I've never tried this, just wondering if it would work.

[ThomasPowers]

If I get a chance I'll look through "Enamelling on Metal" on how they suggest cooling.

When I did an enamelled knife guard I found out that stained glass ground to dust always spalled for me on cooling but the brake lens from a depression era truck, (found in a spoil pile along a river in an old city) when powdered and melted worked fine with the cooling rates I was able to achive.

[the_sandy_creek_forge]

How I did it.
I did try this once on some long lost sample pieces. I used some of those glass drop things that you can buy for fish bowls. I carefully busted them up practically into dust. I placed the workpiece on a piece of polished stainless, and filled the hole with the crushed up glass. **This was the tricky part** I used the welding tip on the oxy/acetylene torch and got a VERY neutral, very small flame. It took quite a bit of fiddling to get it to where it wouldn't blow the glass dust outta the hole. I slowly brought the glass up to a melting temp and gently packed it in with a shiny pein end of a ball pein hammer. It actually worked quite well. I had a few small cracks in the glass, but they kinda added to the look IMHO. Again, I only did this once, so I am no expert, but it's definitely something fun to try and to experiment with.
-Aaron @ the SCF