OK. Here is the way I make batches of Dichroic Glass Stud Earrings.
As you can see, I create quite a few in one firing. Well that's the most efficient way to make these. It involves about two days of cutting glass then firing then cleaning the backs of them and finally gluing the very small cabochons onto 925 solid silver post and attaching them in pairs to display cards.
That's the basics anyway.
Here you go. A bit of a pictorial for you to have a look through.
After cutting dichroic glass into about 1/4" strips using my own designed straight cutter. I then use a glass mosaic cutter to chop these up into 1/4" squares. This take ages when making this many.
Here you can see the selection cut and place on the cutting surface, I don't know if you know but Dichroic glass reflects light at different wavelengths at different angles. This, I have tried to show in the second picture. See how the colour has changed, this happens all the time with this type of glass.
After cutting all these, I think it was about 270 in total. The next task was to cut the top glass (Tekta), sometimes used as a base glass. Again, about 1/4" strips were cut using the straight line cutting tool as above.
I tried to be a bit arty farty with these pictures, As clear glass is quite boring compared to dichroic glass.
Then I started playing with my new camera. With all the top glass cut into 1/4" squares, I piled them up on a piece of pale blue glass. Stuck a light under this and clicked away.
Here is a couple that turned out quite well.
The next task was to set them all out on the kiln tiles. I usually only put two tiles in the kiln at one time but some some strange reason I decided to put three tiles stacked one on top of the other.
To separate tiles a simple tri-ped foot sits in between each tile making sure the points on these are not too close to any glass. Because the glass will stick to it like glue and ruin both the stand and the glass.
And here you are. All three kiln tiles laden with very small pieces of glass. Ready for the firing. Ramp to 805 degrees C and hold for a few minutes. Cool to about 400 degree C and then anneal.
Once cooled to about 100 degrees C, the shelves were removed and allowed to cool to room temperature.
With this many cab fired at one time. I had expected that some would not fire correctly and I was right. Out of all these I lost about a dozen but these can be re fired and still used at a later date.
There was a few extra steps that have not included
but I can't tell you all the secrets of a Alchemist, now can I!
After gluing the silver posts on and leaving to set (min 48 Hours) the earrings were paired up and placed onto there very own display cards ready for listed and showing at street fairs, craft fair, website and Facebook.
Here are just a few, take a look and see what you think.
Hope I haven't bored you with this long blog but it was one that I had been meaning to do for ages but not got around to it.
They are £6 per pair plus a £2 p&p charge.
Thanks for stopping by and getting all the way to the end of this post and call back again sometime to read more about my life as a kiln fired glass jewellery maker.
Steve
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