As mentioned earlier, you will need to determine whether the materials and glazes you would like to use require a high, medium-high, or medium-low temperature ceramic kiln. Low-fire materials include earthenware, stoneware can be intended for either mid-firing or high-firing kilns, and porcelain requires the highest temperature levels. As I have said earlier, kilns are investments and they should be done with adequate precautions.
I have selected the kiln I feel will be appropriate for a pottery beginner. You can order it on amazon by clicking here.
The major difference between a glass kiln and a pottery kiln is that glass kilns generally heat a single layer from the top and pottery kilns heat multiple layers from the side. The reason why glass kilns are designed to heat from the top is that the majority of glass projects tend to be relatively flat.
This keeps temperature differences within a glass project even and it prevents cracking. The same uniform heating results can easily be attained by simply slowing down the firing in the kiln. Firing at low temperatures tend to make the pottery and glass even. Kiln-fired glass, or warm glass as it is also called, is typically done in an electric kiln at temperatures lower than ceramic temperatures.
Due to the lower temperatures involved, most ceramic kilns are capable of firing glass. However, electronic regulators are particularly useful for glass firings, as the temperatures have to be controlled exactly during certain stages of firing.
As earlier indicated, glass kilns have elements on their lid but if doing small pieces of glass, a lid element is not essential for fusing. If you are making jewelry, for example, the tabletop ceramic kilns without lid elements work fine. But the larger your glassware gets, the more complex it gets to do without a lid element. Most Ceramic and Glass Kilns sold today come with Automatic controllers. Both types of controllers almost always have a programming mode called Ramp and Hold Mode which is perfect for writing glass programs.
If your ceramic kiln has a Kiln Sitter instead of an automatic controller fusing glass will be very difficult and is not recommended. Just because you can fire glass in your ceramic kiln does not mean you can fire your pottery in a glass kiln.
A typical glass kiln does not go beyond F. A typical mid-fire stoneware clay needs about F to F to bake, thereby firing your pottery pieces in a glass kiln might be difficult. You are going to have to cut your glass into whatever shapes you want to fuse.
You can cut your glass into circles, squares, triangles, or whatever shapes you want to use in your design. Kindly note that you can also stack your glass pieces and fuse them directly on the kiln shelf, or you can lay them over a slumping mold to create a three-dimensional piece. This is a beautiful way to incorporate glass in the classroom for all ages. More info on glass mosaics tomorrow… How do I prepare the kiln shelf for glass? Glass will stick to the kiln shelf if there is no barrier between them.
Again you have 2 options when protecting the kiln shelf. Kiln shelf paper can be used to line and protect the shelf. Some paper is good for multiple firings, while others are single fire use.
This option is convenient but more expensive than kiln wash. Glass kiln wash is specially formulated to easily separate glass from either a shelf or mold.
Primo Primer is especially easy to use. It removes from the shelf after firing by simply brushing or by wiping with a damp sponge. No tedious and or messy scraping is required. Primo Primer also retains the fine detail in any mold i. Here are a couple of the most common: Wow- That was a lot of information! More from Jessica.
The optimum operating temperatures for K and N is say, - c ish glass zone. Kilns for ceramics will use type R or S which is optimum at say - c ish. This is really a purest view, but you may find, depending on how critical your glass is, that the cycle needs to be tweaked a few degrees to compensate for using type R or S at lower temperatures. However, as has been said, loads of places fire glass in ceramics kilns not giving a hoot about the control type.
Well I hope I haven't confused matters too much. Dennis Brady : Pretty much all fused glass started with pottery kilns. As kilnformers learned of the need for firing schedules more complicated then just getting up to temperature and turning off as is the way pottery is fired , and got tired with having to babysit their kilns to create those schedules, entrepreneurs created digital controllers.
A controller makes it much easier but you can still produce the same results with a pottery kiln. As was mentioned in another post, the main problem other then the nuisance of having to sit with your kiln is the uneven heat distribution caused by side elements heating up the outer rim faster then the middle. To avoid the thermal shock cracks this will cause, if you fire with a pottery kiln you must ramp up and down slower then with a top element kiln.
Most all kiln makers produce a "kit" that will convert any kiln to using a digital controller. We've sold over of these to glass artisans that started with a used pottery kiln. The colors, so bold and vibrant, really catch the eye. Any ceramic work you produce with glass is guaranteed to be a bit of a showstopper. The main difference between a glass kiln and a ceramics kiln is that glass kilns fire from the top down, typically to get an even heat on flat glassware, and ceramic kilns fire from elements around the kiln to heat the objects evenly.
Be careful not to use too much glass in your work. There are several different ways you can apply the glass to your work. Firstly, you can put it on top of the glazed work. For a different result, you can glaze your work and then scrape back the glaze in certain places and put the glass in these places. There are quite a lot of factors to consider with this, as the type of glass you use and the type of clay you use will have a big effect on the finished result.
The results with this type of work are quite literally endless.
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