I know this has been asked many times before and have been looking through to find out more. I have just made quite a few pendants but all have come out with horrible grey band round the edge, I did cut them out from large sheet and then ground edges and I know now from reading that I perhaps should not use fibre paper just kiln wash and thoroughly clean edges after grinding, which I will try with my next lot and also check my kiln ramp up, slower if I read correctly.
Sorry to go on but my question is, can anything be done to the the edges of the ones already fired? I can't bear to throw them away. Thanks for reading.
You can grind that away and maybe use a pad to smooth it, then really clean up the edges as per your comments here. Sometimes, if it's really bad, I cut the pendants up and make cuff links or earrings if the design lends itself, then I get my clean edges back. You can also do a lot of grinding and lose the size, scrub fire, then tack a few together....maybe, depends what they look like!
Sorry this has happened. Which colours were involved?
Do you make your top layer bigger than the bottom one so that it drops down and around the lower layer?
Thanks for replies. I made one large sheet from lots of different coloured dichroic and then cut out the pendants. They are three layers thick. Yesterday I refired them directly onto kiln shelf and coated the sides with a devit wash, on a fire polish programme, they are better but it has not gone completely. The next lot I have just cut out without grinding to see if this makes a difference. Have a few more to cut before going in kiln.
Have fired next lot and have success. No devit and lovely shapes. Thanks for all tips really worked.
Can we see some pics?
so was the answer to the problem not to grind the edges? were there other differences as well?
I did grind some of the edges but cleaned them very thoroughly. I then put them into my skutt kiln on a slow ramp up on a full fuse, really chuffed now that I've got rid of that awful grey line.
Will try to put some photo's on, if I can remember how to do it.
That's excellent, Suzanne! Clean edges and a slow ramp-up (until about 500 deg C, as far as I remember) are main points. Also, in a thread from long ago I seem to remember an advice was to put the ground pieces straight into concentrated soapy water while waiting to be cleaned, so that the ground glass edges don't start to "fuse" together.