Most of session four was devoted to cutting glass but an important decision had to be taken at the beginning of the session related to the fused glass section which had been fired during the week. The fused frit circular element, that I had made to represent heel pain was now finished and it posed a few issues. The first was that although it was the right thickness it was lumpy. I could have it re-fired but I decided I liked the look of it and would like to keep it as is. This will make it hard to clean when working on fitting and holding the leaded sections together later on, but I think it will be worth it. The other issue was that I made the circular shape larger than I needed it in relation to the original design, so that I could cut it down afterwards. Now that I have decided to keep the lumpiness, it is impossible to cut, so that It was decided to grind down the edges, and to smooth out the curve, but to maintain the more organic edge, as opposed to the original shape which was drawn using a compass.
Fused glass made of various course and fine frits
You can just about see the sharp bits on the edge and the fact that sometimes the edge dips inwards, I needed to remove both sharp edges and smooth out the indentations.
All-Star Glass Grinder
The workshop has an All-Star glass grinder, the main thing to beware of is forgetting to use goggles or to have glasses on to protect your eyes. A smooth movement is needed to keep the curves smooth. (Nb the company that makes these is no more, so replacement grinder heads will be very hard to find) Once the edges had been smoothed off the new shape is placed over the cartoon
Once in place the Black Sharpie drawn lines indicating the edges between sections of glass, are extended using a white Sharpie onto the fused frit glass circle. An arrow is also drawn so that it is easy to find the top edge. A new more organic circle shape is now drawn using the edge of the glass circle as a template.
The new shape is drawn and the old one slightly greyed out using the white pen
The new shape cuts into the sections surrounding it, so the first thing I have to do is trace this onto the pieces of pink glass I have already cut. Then I go back into glass cutting mode, first of all recutting the pink and then using the adjusted cartoon, alongside the template sheet that I still continue to cut out, to draw up as many pieces of glass as I can, searching through the trays of glass off-cuts for pieces that are slightly bigger than the paper templates.
Marked up glass pieces with their paper templates
Once cut I was able to place the sections on the light-box to check how the colour was working.
Cut pieces set out on the light-box
The 'fit' between sections of cut glass can now also be checked. In this case they seemed to fit pretty well, close enough to not need any immediate grinding off, but when we come to the reality of fitting it all together with the leading, some adjustments will inevitably need to be made. I am personally reassured that I am getting better at the glass cutting and am making less mistakes. In particular I am getting better at controlling the weight of the cutter when making changes in the curve direction when scoring.
The rest of the session was me cutting glass, including the amber range of glass for the Sooty figure and more small sections of green and blue. By the end of the session I had only 10 pieces of the main design left to cut, but these are larger and I might have to buy in glass for these. Then finally we will look at cutting out glass for the border.
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