I recently moved my "studio" from my dining room to my basement. This forced me to clean off my table, and boy was that a long time coming. I was not looking forward to picking through all that glass, but I knew I'd find some goodies and glass rods I'd forgotten about buried under more glass rods. I also was hoping to find some murrini that had popped out of my tweezers while I was trying to apply it. But what I mostly wound up finding were shorts. Not the kind you wear, mind you, but short pieces of glass. Those short pieces, which are about one to two inches long, are what is left when you use a rod of glass down to where you can safely handle it. I'm pretty sure I've seen special tweezers that are made for holding those short pieces of glass, but I've never used them. Sometimes I use my mashers to hold those smaller pieces, and sometimes I'll fuse a couple of them together to make a longer usable rod. But mostly I just let them accumulate. I have a lot of shorts. I think I'd better get fusing - that's a lot of glass that could be used.
What do you do with your shorts?
Here is a random picture of my cats after I folded some warm towels. Ernie is the orange one burrowing in the blanket. Burt got the warm towels and the other black kitty is Buzz.
People that make fused items would buy your shorts in small portions, or maybe even large portions?. If you were to list them in little baggies... I bet they'd sell!
ReplyDeleteI do 2 things with the shorts:
ReplyDeleteFirst, I have an old coffee-grinder,(not electric but one from my great grandmother attached to the wall) I put the shorts in and make my own frit. Advantage: I can make it as coarse or fine as I want, and all the color mixes I want.
Second,I melt 2 shorties together to make a longer rod. You can use it normaly or to make stringers.
I hope this will help you, best regards from Holland, Astrid (StridesKreatief on twitter)
I fuse my coe 90. My 104 I "try" to use up - I do have those rod holders (2 of them - cause I always seem to end up with lots of shorts at the same time!).
ReplyDeleteI also have a "rod pod" for fusing so I will fill it with like colors and fuse them into longer rods.
You know, I probably shouldn't have used the word "fuse" when I said I should fuse them together - I should have said "melt", like Astrid suggested (thank you!). I don't know anything about fusing in a kiln, but I have melted some short together. Astrid - your coffee grinder/frit maker sounds like an excellent idea!
ReplyDeleteThose shorts sure do accumulate-don't they? I usually just pull stringers with them-as I often have colors that I run out of regular rods of. I also will melt some of my shortest ones onto a mandrel and make a larger focal and do some experimenting with the different colors.
ReplyDeleteYep - I've done that, too, nomad. I'll melt one of those little shorts onto a mandrel and make a honkin' big turtle. It always feels good to finish a short. I should pull some into stringer - I don't use it very much but I should force myself.
ReplyDeleteI do all of the above. But I do have one of those tools that allows me to use the short until there's only about 1/4" left. And then I don't feel badly about throwing that one into its watery grave.
ReplyDeleteMe too! I melt them together, or use a special holding tool and just make a few spacers with them.
ReplyDelete