Hi all
Does any one have any ideas for making flat round glass discs? I need to make a lot of them, around the size of a pound coin, up to 6mm thick. I've tried using a slumpy mould but I just get domed discs from that and I need to be able to stack them.
MartMan
Larger flat round glass discs can be made by making tiny pot melts using the smallest flower pots from the garden centre. Failing that, if you have access to a lampwork torch, heat the end of a glass rod to make a round bead shape and flatten with mashers. Cut off the rod when cool and grind down the spike of glass. The discs can be put in the kiln to flame polish the cut off spike. Email me if you want to know more about pot melts.
See http://kiloalphatango.com/search/node/pot%20melts which gives the links to various posts about them.
To make them totally flat the best thing I can think of is to use a small circle cutter. I have just ordered myself the Moreton teeny circle cutter, so cannot say how easy it is to use it (you need the Moreton cutting surface to use it) - hopefully there'll be someone around who has a lot more experience than me and can give a better answer.
The problem with cutting out tiny circles is not the scoring but the breaking out. Another method is to cut out squares and then nip off the corners to make an almost circle then grind the rest to shape. Use Leponitt nippers.
Cut three 1 cm squares. Pile up neatly, and full fuse away. You should get perfect rounds. job done.
HTH
just read the domed part. You will get them domed, should read before I post. ::)
Would it be possible to cut discs from thick glass rod (upmarket towel rail?) with a diamond tile cutter, then fire polish?
Chas
Thanks for all your helpfull hints, I think that Pat has the best solution with the lampwork just need to find a way making sure they are all the same size.
Glass Studio Supplies to packs of Bullseye compatible pre-cut circles, the smallest is 2cm, would that be too big?
http://www.glassstudiosupplies.co.uk/epages/es137568.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/es137568/Products/PCC/SubProducts/PCCM2 (http://www.glassstudiosupplies.co.uk/epages/es137568.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/es137568/Products/PCC/SubProducts/PCCM2)
I used the larger size, two layers, got some lovely flat discs with rounded edges - if you wanted a square edge, you'd need to go to probably a tack fuse.
Just draw the circles to the size you want with a Sharpie pen on the flat glass sheet and then score the sheet with straight lines as if drawing a chess board. This will give you lots of squares, each of which has one circle in it that you can get to nearly the correct shape by nipping off pieces of glass with the nippers. The tiny pieces of glass left around the circle can be ground off if you have access to a glass grinder.
Last year I bought a lens cutter from Warmglass. It cuts small circles. Breaking them out isn't always too easy, but you can usually do it by cutting the circle, then using a normal glass cutter to cut a square as near as possible around it, then breaking off the corners and edges. I find it works very well, and is not too expensive - £47.20 + vat.
I have one of these, too.
https://www.creativeglassguild.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=2714
It is good, after scoring if you turn the glass over and press around the inside and outside of the score, resting the glass on a piece of old carpet or something. Turn the glass back over and make a few slanted scores from the scoreline to the edges, then snap off those outer pieces , the circles should come out nicely. Janet
Thanks again for all the replies
The lens cutter is a good option but I would still have to do a lot of cold working and as I want around 80 as a finished product, it would take me a long time. I also need them all to be the same size.
Would piece of 8mm copper tube lined with thinfire and filled with frit work?
MartMan
Do you want them transparent? You could could try to find a chocolate mould that makes round tabs of about the right size and use it to make freeze & fuse discs with powder frit, but they will end up fairly opaque even if you use transparent frit.
Here's a youtube video about freezefusing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKAuIkFFKPY
I am not sure if it would work or not Martman, but I would always suggest giving it a try.
As Noora points out, using frit, even transparent will give you an opaque look - the larger the frit size you go, the lesser the opaque-ness (is that even a word) - and with how small your disks are, I would not have thought you could go to a very large sized frit.
With a fine frit and a low tack fuse you could probably get a fairly flat surface using a mould (whether it be tubing, or ceramics, etc) for this, but at this small a diameter, you might still get doming if you take it high enough to get the top surface smooth enough for stacking....
Another suggestion for you :D:
Use a diamond core bit of the right size. Normally one uses the glass with the hole in, but I cannot see why it cannot be used to make circles, as long as you get a drill bit where the core can easily be "poked out". The circles/cores would be equal in size. They will need fire polishing to achieve a perfect smooth edge, but that can easily be achieved in a kiln.
Here is one place to get some info on how to drill in glass: http://www.eternaltools.com/how-to-drill-glass/
Brill idea Julie!
Quote from: Zeldazog on June 05, 2012, 01:45:10 PM
Brill idea Julie!
Thanks, Dawn - I might even use that idea myself ;D ;D
Thanks Julie I will give it a go.
Mart
I ordered myself a couple of the eternal tools core drills, and had a little go:
(http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7095/7169414959_34d347b61a.jpg) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/juliehb/7169414959/)
small circles (http://www.flickr.com/photos/juliehb/7169414959/) by JulieHB (http://www.flickr.com/people/juliehb/), on Flickr
The glass I cut was the thin BE glass (1.5mm thick?). The biggest circles in the picture is about 18mm, and the smaller size about 13mm.
A couple of observations - the diameter of the final circle is 1.5-2mm smaller than the specified drill diameter. I you need a perfect edge without melting the glass you still need to cold work the edges with a grinder or diamond pad/sickle stone before you fire polish them.
for me, who just want to fuse a few layers together to equally sized cabs it works very well. :)
Thanks for that info Julie. Unfortunately when I had to do about 100 circles some years ago for the frame of a large panel, each was about 2 inches in diameter. I chickened out and got the kids to foil them, also the small rectangles for the frame.
Can't find the original photo but heres a corner of the panel showing part of the frame plus a bit of sky. I foiled the white triangles :o :o :o
(http://pic20.picturetrail.com/VOL1426/5604171/24134598/402962213.jpg)
Oh, well done, Pat - that must have been a LOT of work!!!
Thanks Julie. It took 3 months to make.
Hi. Just found this post from yonks ago.
If I pile 3mm thick glass (cut to 1cm by 1cm) on top of each other (3 of them as suggested) do you know how big these circles will be?
Thanks.
Sarah.
One way to find out x
Freeze and fuse is a great idea for this - if you get the firing just right then you'll get lovely clean corners. Use an electric toothbrush or something to vibrate your mix to get the worst of the air bubbles out before freezing.
Quote from: Jane C ♫ on November 16, 2013, 10:03:03 AM
Freeze and fuse is a great idea for this - if you get the firing just right then you'll get lovely clean corners. Use an electric toothbrush or something to vibrate your mix to get the worst of the air bubbles out before freezing.
Years ago, in the 70s, I did a course on Lost Wax Casting, and our teacher (an extrovert eccentric! :D) used a vibrator bought from a sex shop to get the bubbles out of the casting medium. It was the first time (and, I think, the last) that I had seen one. :o
Nick
What a very interesting thread ::)