Latest pot melt

I'm still experimenting with my pot melts and decided to try one with two extra holes in the bottom of the flower pot. I also stacked the glass in alternating colours with the largest weight of glass being blue followed by just over half the amount of red. I also added some white, orange and green small pieces and some black stringer, ( long thin rods of glass about the thickness of a pencil lead).

This time too I covered the kiln shelf in Boron nitride kiln shelf wash as the refractory to stop the glass sticking to the shelf. Previously I had used fibre paper which results in the reverse of the melt requiring more work to provide a smooth finish. So I eagerly awaited the result. After leaving the kiln to cool naturally for just over 16 hours the result is shown below.

Three hole melt: This melt is 18 x 16 cm and has 350 grams of glass in it.The reverse is already super smooth and will require only a little additional work by sandblasting after a dark border is set around the melt and fused to it.Three hole melt: This melt is 18 x 16 cm and has 350 grams of glass in it.The reverse is already super smooth and will require only a little additional work by sandblasting after a dark border is set around the melt and fused to it.

Three holed pot: Three hole pot used for the above melt.Three holed pot: Three hole pot used for the above melt.

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michele kohnei's picture

I was just wondering what

I was just wondering what kind of stand you used to hold up the pot?

Pat from Canvey's picture

Kiln set up

I used old kiln shelf cut into 4 strips with a domestic tile cutter. The strips were supported on kiln posts.I put one post in each corner of the kiln shelf on which the melt would flow. Put a strip across the front and back of the kiln, then, according to the size of the pot I was using, placed 2 further strips at right angles suspended on the first two strips. The distance appart of these last 2 strips depends on the diameter of the plant pot. By placing the posts at each corner, it allows the maximum space on the shelf for the melt to form.

kat's picture

Ingenious

That's pretty ingenious....not that I'm trying to disparage you in any way - I'd just never really thought about how you would stop the problem of having whatever you were supporting the pot with in the glass melt. It never twigged that you'd have to come up with a beam support method although obviously that way gives you the most flowable unobstructed area.

Michele kohnei's picture

WOW!! Thats great. I have

WOW!! Thats great. I have seen some stands out there that are pretty expensive and still don't allow for that much open floor space, so i was really looking for a cheap way to do it myself. Thank you so much, I can't wait to give it a try!

Guest's picture

Pot Melt

Wow, that's great. Have you experience any problems with the kiln wash sticking to the melt? I have an awful problem with that and have even change to Hotline Primo Primer kiln wash - without success. What firing schedule do you use?

Thanks for your help!

Pat from Canvey's picture

Wash sticking to melt

I use Hot Line High Fire Shelf Primer and put on about 4 coats. I use an old ceramic kiln with settings 1-5 and high with a digital pyrometer. I use a very simple schedule. On "High" till the kiln reaches 930 degrees centigrade and then soak for an hour to let the most amount of glass flow through the pot. I do look to see how much has flowed and how big the melt is at that point, mainly because I've had the melt flow over the base shelf in the past. Obviously then I'd put too much glass in the pot. If the melt is in danger of overflowing, I vent the kiln by opening the door. If the melt is not big enough yet,I continue to soak until I assume the pot is empty. A quick way is to look to see if glass is still dripping through the hole to the shelf. Once the kiln has vented to about 550-520 centigrade, depending on the type of glass I'm using, I shut the door and allow it to cool naturally, usually about another 12 hours as it is a big kiln.
I use Diapads to remove as much of the shelf primer as possible, then cover the top surface with contact paper. I usually then put the melt in some almost spent acid, but you can also sandblast the bottom of the melt to get rid of any remaining primer.
Hope this helps.

Ron's picture

pot melt with unique design

Hi Pat, your pot melts are very very neat, my wife and I have been doing some but they all come out more circular as the glass seems to mix and flow like honey, we have a Duncam boss kiln with a digital pyrometer, we have been using a 6" clay pot and about 1700 grams of glass (mainly clear and then two other colours) about 1400 grams of the clear and 200 of the primary colour and then 100 of the secondary colour, the glass is in smalll bits and we mix it all together, when we fire we have the pot up off the shelf on two 1" square steel bars and they are about 24" long, we have the bars up on some fire bricks so we are about 7" off the shelf, we take about two hours to reach 250 C(500F) and then take about 4 to 5 hours to reach 950C(1700 f) this will give us a perfect circle that is about 11 3/4" in diameter, the glass seems to mix as it spirals down, we have tried doing it at lower levels about 3" off the shelf but have the same results, we really like the effect you get with your pot melts and were wondering if we are doing something wrong or how you are able to achieve your results,
thanks for any help you can give us
Ann & Ron in Kingston

Pat from Canvey's picture

Mixed colour pot melts

"the glass is in small bits and we mix it all together"
This might be where you are going wrong. Have you tried keeping the colours more separate? Try larger bits of glass too, or if you are using up left over pieces from a window etc. put the same colours together. There are some odds and ends I've done at my Picture Trail
I have other pot melts but haven't bothered to post pictures. The red and blue is an early one. Good luck with the experiments.

EDIT: Linkified by kat.

Guest's picture

Your pot melt is

Your pot melt is beautiful!

I've been doing some melts with red and blues and getting a lot of muddy looking pieces. I stand strips on end and somewhat separate the colors. I also use about 1/3 of the total weight in clear.

Could you share how the pieces are assembled in your pot? A picture would be wonderfully helpful if you have one.

Shirley

Pat from Canvey's picture

Holes in pot

I don't have a picture I'm afraid, I just keep blocks of colour together. I also stand the strips on end. This melt had three holes in the pot as shown in the picture above and this contributed to the pattern that emerged. I deliberately made two smaller holes on either side of the large one. I don't think I added any clear glass. Here's a melt with a lot of clear in it plus I've added a border subsequently.
Green/blue spectrum border: Pot melt of mainly Spectrum clear waterglass with tiny pieces of accent coloursGreen/blue spectrum border: Pot melt of mainly Spectrum clear waterglass with tiny pieces of accent colours
I've experimented with different placement of holes and sizes and this contributes a great deal to the pattern which emerges in the melt. I've also fused some of my earlier smaller trial melts together, just to see what the effect would be.These smaller melts started out as three tiny pot melts in Bullseye Fusible glass which looked very nondescript when taken out of the kiln. Not content with these, I placed two of them back in a pot and left the other on a kiln shelf placed so that the melt would drop onto the pre-existing one. These were all done on fibre paper, not thinfire. I still didn't like the result nor the finish on the back of the resulting piece. The fibre paper seemed to have stopped the glass from flowing smoothly across the kiln shelf. After a few weeks deliberation during which time I got on with other melts,I decided to take one last shot at it and cut extra pieces of glass to go around the mishapen melt, added a few stringers and some extra pieces of glass and fused at 940 deg cent so that I could also add a few combs in the glass to make the plainer areas more interesting.
I'm more into beads these days. I can use up small pieces of scrap glass left over from making stained glass panels and accumulated over about 10 years.

Pat from Canvey's picture

Finally found the picture

My version of the Multi-coloured Dreamcoat: .My version of the Multi-coloured Dreamcoat: .

that relates to the comments above.Click on the thumbnail to get a larger version. Once there, click on original to get a super sized one.

penny's picture

hey these are very

hey these are very beautiful
you are one talented person:)

Lauren's picture

Amazing Pot Melt!

This is amazing! Could you use regular kiln wash in place of thin fire and still get the same spread do you think? Also, have you tried melting through a metal screen yet-- I think you might enjoy the results, just make sure the wire is stainless or at least steel (I've used chicken wire wrapped around kiln bricks before to hold the glass. Interesting results!

Pat from Canvey's picture

Kiln wash

I think what regulates the spread is the volume of glass used not whether I use kiln wash or fibre paper. I tend to use the thicker paper because I prefer the finish it leaves on the base of the melt. I haven't used a metal screen because I've got resonable results making different sized holes in terracotta pots which are used once and then thrown away. I'm more into lampwork beads and jewellery these days too so I use some of my left over Spectrum and Bullseye glass cut into strips for that.

Guest's picture

pot melt into pattern bar mold

how do i calculate hol much glass to put into the pot to fill a pattern bar mold

Pat from Canvey's picture

Guessing

As I've never done this, I can only guess at the method. If you are using strips of glass, I'd lay them in the mold and fill up any spaces with chips of glass and then weigh the amount of glass used. Or carry out a trial run with some cheap glass previously weighed and see how much of the mold it fills up. Are you actually doing a pot melt and making a pattern bar to slice up subsequently? When I wanted to make a block of glass, I used kiln washed terracotta tiles for dams and let the pot melt spill into that. But you do need a large diamond saw to be able to cut up the block subsequently.

Cindy's picture

Recycling fused glass for doing my pot melt

Hi! I love your work! I need your expert advice. Can I melt down glass that has previously been fused if doing a pot melt? I realize glass can be re-fired. I have never done a pot melt though, and I am questioning whether using pre-fired glass will work. I made up a lot of practice pieces (consisting of jewelry) when I first began learning to fuse. I am hoping to recycle many of these.If it is okay to use them in melts.... Do I need to keep them whole or break them apart? I thought they might fire more readily if they were first broken up. Can I combine them with raw glass as well or should I make a batch consisting of those being only pendants? 

I hope you understand my questions. Thanks for your advice!  Cindy

Pat from Canvey's picture

COE's

Hi Cindy, I'm not an expert but have learned a lot through experimenting. There's no reason why you can't melt down glass that has been previously fused provided that all the glass has the same Coefficient of Expansion. If you used, say, all Bullseye glass, then that would be fine but putting Bullseye pendants and those using another type of glass would result in incompatibilty and would probably crack. All Spectrum fusible would be fine but using bottle glass from different bottles with all it's differing COE's would not. You can keep the pieces whole or break them up depending on how you want the colours to come out, but realising that you can never be quite sure how the melt will come out. If you haven't done a melt before, I suggest you do a small one using say cheap glass from a wine or beer bottle or clear from a jar but don't mix the glass from say a wine bottle with that from a jar as the COE's would probably be ever so slightly different. Have a look at Wikipaedia for a longer explanation of COE's. Good luck.

Sara's picture

Sara

This might be where you are going wrong. Have you tried keeping the colors more separate? Try larger bits of glass too, or if you are using up left over pieces from a window etc. put the same colors together. There are some odds and ends I've done at my Picture Trail. Thank you.