Flat round discs

[Martman]

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

[Pat from Canvey]

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.

[julieHB]

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.

[Pat from Canvey]

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.

[Hotglass28]

Cut three 1 cm squares. Pile up neatly, and full fuse away. You should get perfect rounds. job done.

HTH

[Hotglass28]

just read the domed part. You will get them domed, should read before I post. 

[chas]

Would it be possible to cut discs from thick glass rod (upmarket towel rail?) with a diamond tile cutter, then fire polish?

Chas

[Martman]

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. 

[Zeldazog]

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

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.

[Pat from Canvey]

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.

[Nicknack]

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.

[JKC]

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

[Martman]

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

[noora]

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

[Zeldazog]

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....